(Writtenby Islander)
Metal-Archives currently brands the Australian band Mekigah “Gothic/Doom Metal” based on the band’s first four albums. Based on Mekigah‘s forthcoming fifth album they may have to put an “(early)” parenthetical next to that genre description. But what will they put in front of “(later)”? What kind of genre label does the fifth album suggest? That turns out to be a very tough question.
Mekigah itself describes the new album as “a purposely designed ugly, drawn out, raw, awkward journey,” with “no attempt or desire to either embrace the slow slow doom, to aggressively technically impress or to build upon previous motifs”:
“Everything is caught between worlds, as Mekigah itself is caught between worlds. Nothing is where it belongs as things are uncomfortably forced together through the sheer necessity of only gaining satisfaction via sonic self sabotage and harm, creating audial-mazes which then have to delicately be navigated through.”
What does this mean? We’ll find out together, through our premiere stream of this new album, To Hold Onto A Heartless Heart, now due for release on August 15th via the Aesthetic Death label.
On the new album Mekigah‘s alter-ego Vis Ortis was once again joined by long-time collaborator guitarist Richard Ziltch, and this time also joined by Tasmanian underground metallists Leigh Ritson (Disseminate, Thrall, Ruins) and Alex Pope (Ruins, Evil Dead), along with local experimental noise-mates Sova Locus (Primal Regression Therapy), Sydney Punk/Noise stalwart Con BCTW (Blurters, Milat, Impact Statement), and local arborist Sammy, who wields a chainsaw and a bowed saw on the album.
On the surface the concoctions captured on this new fifth album are perplexing and arresting and seem to operate on an almost subliminal level for the listener. It will set your head spinning and your mood morphing even when it’s hard to put your finger on just how it’s doing that.
The album opener “Collapsing Under” is more than 14 minutes long, the longest track on the album by a significant margin. For that reason, and for other reasons, it seems to stand at the threshold with its arms crossed and an intimidating stare, daring listeners to “get past me if you can”.
It begins in ghostly fashion, in a strange and unsettling collage of noises, some of them clanging and tinkling piano keys, others weirdly wailing tones or screeching abrasions. When the drums arrive they’re not fancy, more like the mythic “caveman crushing rocks”, and the vocals manifest as scarring roars and tormented howls. Piano keys continue to convulse while other tones radiate in long, dismal, sizzling drones.
Backed by those primitive, tribal beats (head-moving in their effect), throbbing electronic pulsations (almost like a cathedral organ) enmesh with searing siren-like shrillness in the high range, creating an alien affect, somehow both cold and demented, both tortured and celestial, especially when the beats vanish. Somehow the piano survives the densely layered spectacle of cataclysm, meandering as if lost in its own musings while the house comes down around it.
From there, “Broken Rhythm Pressure” beguiles the listener with a more classically influenced but still wandering piano melody, but then switches into a cavalcade of big booming and bouncing beats, monstrous growls, berserk screams, and sounds of a brain frying in a pan.
The bass slows but still vibrantly throbs, while everything else climbs toward a crescendo of hallucinatory insanity. At one point the percussion sounds like the hooves of a cantering horse. Our strange friend, the wandering piano, returns as well, as if clamoring from the farthest room in a haunted house.
For the most part, it’s hard to tell what’s making all the sounds, but the tonalities are varied and meticulously layered, so much so that it would take more than one trip through this track (or any of them) to pick out the pieces.
As the album continues to lead us through its audial labyrinth, its hallucinatory properties only grow stronger. There’s no foreseeing which way the music will turn, only that it will turn, relentlessly. Seductive dreaminess and gorgeous grandeur lie around some turns (especially in the final track), and crashing catastrophe, enhanced by catastrophic vocals, around others. We go through torture-chamber doors but also get teleported into off-planet hive-minds busy implementing their indecipherable plans for our unwitting world.
The music vividly sparkles, heavily drones, whispers like icy winds, and rudely assaults the senses. We get sonic visions of cosmic wonder, and other visions of reality splintering apart in jagged shards. Some of it seems heaven-sent, some of it seems hellish. Some of the pumping beats are almost dance-able, others want to brain us.
These kinds of sharply contrasting ebbs and flows in sound and mood seem to send a message — that neither heaven nor hell, beauty nor ugliness, sanity nor lunacy, will achieve complete supremacy, i.e., that we’re always going to have both, the pit and the stars.
The trite and always-accurate phrase “this isn’t for everyone” comes to mind. But for adventurous minds willing to go outside whatever their comfort zones are and into someone else’s fever dreams, the album is ingenious and fascinating.
In the end, the album’s title may tell the tale truly. Maybe the album was Mekigah‘s way of holding onto its own heartless heart. It will get its grip on some other hearts too.
We’ve obviously spilled a great volume of words about this transfixing record. But we ought to share the linguistic torrent of Mekigah too:
“After a few years of working on several other bands & projects & a few false starts to a 5th album, To Hold Onto a Heartless Heart was born. Trying not to think too much about what had come before & not interested in really building upon the previous sounds (for now) this album was slow to get underway but built momentum as soon as the first, 14min, track “Collapsing Under” was complete. This seemed to unlock what was required for the rest of the album & a shift in pace and feel then takes over.
“Faster slightly more straight forward passages of bass riffing, upbeat but sparse, untechnical raw drums. Guitars are used more to provide stabbing and yet ambient frequencies & what may or may not be synths along with piano work as counter melodies, odd clashes with riffs & layers of aural claustrophobia. Sudden changes and shapeshifting in random ways to sections of soundscape noise, field recordings, morbid doom noise punk & relentless walls of frequencies all designed to overwhelm the senses but also to challenge on repeated listens to unravel and appreciate all the layers going on.
“The few lyrics that exist on this album are like shards of emotions that don’t contain the entire sentence but capture the core of the thought behind them. There are moments of brooding, wordless, mournful choirs, relaxed and breathing slowly. Then a variety of unhinged explosive schizophrenic vocals crashing in. The vocals an unhinged lead noise instrument. Outbursts of pain, confusion and bitterness. As well as a desire to create something musically unique to myself & combining elements of bands, sounds & ideas which I love that I wished to hear melded together, this album also is an overall expression of the challenging, often outright weird confusion, grief & tragedy swirling in & around my life & mind during this time”.
To Hold Onto a Heartless Heart was composed, recorded, and mixed by Vis Ortis and Leigh Ritson in Huonville and Moonah, Tasmania. It was mastered by Greg Chandler at Priory Studios in the UK.
Aesthetic Death will release the album on 6-panel CD digipack and digital formats. For more info, check the links below.
MEKIGAH:
https://mekigah.bandcamp.com/album/to-hold-onto-a-heartless-heart
https://www.facebook.com/Mekigah
AESTHETIC DEATH:
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/
https://www.aestheticdeath.com/
https://www.facebook.com/aestheticdeath.uk