SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MEFITIS, CLOUDS, SIKARIO, LABYRINTHUS STELLARUM

(written by Islander)

This is a good time to take stock of where we are (“we” being NCS, not the squirming hive of humanity that continues spinning helplessly through the void). I thought we would have the final installment of our year-end lists from writers and other friends on Monday, but a late-breaking e-mail creates the possibility there will be one more after that. Whether we finish Monday or a bit later, there’s one more segment of LISTMANIA still to come, i.e., my own list of 2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. More on that in a minute.

Next week we’ll also have Andy‘s monthly Synn Report and five song premieres (at last count), plus at least a couple of interviews that have been patiently (or impatiently) waiting for an opening. After next week, most of which will still be a holiday for most people, things in metaldom will ramp back up into the usual churn of news announcements and new releases, and we’ll again have the usual weekly volume of premieres, reviews, and interviews from then until 2025 starts winding down.

Except when my day job has rudely interfered, it’s been my habit to start rolling out that Infectious Song list right after January 1st, so as not to interfere with publication of the other year-end lists in December. That’s my intention this year too. But that kind of timing does create some stresses, because I basically figure out that list as it goes along while trying to do everything else I normally do.

The only real chance I have to get a head-start on it is this weekend, and to a lesser extent the other days between now and January 2nd. After that, it’s a day-by-day work in progress until I hit a brick wall at the end of January.

So, in an attempt to focus on what I’m going to do with that list this year, I’ve kept this roundup and the one on Sunday fairly short, but still (I hope you’ll agree) very sweet.

 

MEFITIS (U.S.)

Anyone who heard this band’s last album, or at least anyone with a musically adventurous mind-set, would have leaped upon their new one like a cat on a mouse. As our guest reviewer Lonegoat wrote about 2021’s Offscourings, it was a breath of fresh air: “Compositional prowess alone is worthy of praise, but Mefitis’ robust musicianship and abstract philosophy help to etch their expression into the edifice of extreme metal.”

Their new album The Skorian // The Greyleer is, as its title implies and as the band themselves state, a work of two “halves.” That doesn’t mean some completely shocking shift occurs between the two. From the outset, many shifts occur from song to song, and within songs, as the band veer among phases of greater and lesser wildness and instrumental intricacy.

At peak wildness, which tends to coincide with peak speed, they spin the listener’s head in ways not many bands can do, not only because of the riotous inventiveness and diabolical exuberance of their songwriting but also because of their jaw-dropping talents as musicians. When less wild, the music is still elaborate and head-twisting but more sinister and surreal.

The vocals are wild beasts all the time — until “Wanthriven,” when impressively spooky singing surfaces, along with an equally spooky stylistic shift that’s even less connected to death, black, and thrash metal. The next two songs (the album’s last two) are in a similar vein — conjuring images of witches, warlocks, and demon revels, perfect for Halloween — though to be sure they’re almost as head-spinning and demented as what has come before.

As I hear it, those final three songs are the second “half” of the album, even though they’re not half the songs. It’s not just the occurrences of singing and the more prominent use of throw-back keys that mark their difference from the first five. They also seem to pull from traditions of occult rock that trace back to the ’70s and even ’60s.

For an album so lavishly ingenious and stylistically kaleidoscopic that it attracts the label “avant-garde,” it’s actually also loaded with fiendish melodic and rhythmic hooks – one more reason why it’s easy to stay rooted in place, in addition to all the constant marvels.

The album is out now (as of late November) on Profound Lore. At Bandcamp there’s more detail about its conception and how it was made.

https://thetruemefitis.bandcamp.com/album/the-skorian-the-greyleer
https://www.facebook.com/MefitisRising/

 

CLOUDS (Romania)

2025 will bring us a new Clouds album named Desprins. A few days ago, 2024 brought us a video for a song from it named “Life Becomes Lifeless.” The lyrics, which you’ll see in the video, are wrenching — a poem of loss and pain, of wretched regret and hopeless loneliness.

The song as a whole is also a paean of loss and pain. It’s both heavy and haunting. It has grooves that pugnaciously pound and jolt, but coupled with miserably wailing melodies. It brings abyssal gutturals but also grieving whispers and broken-hearted singing. The music becomes beautifully gentle and poignant, but it sears and shivers in torment too.

https://cloudsofficial.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CloudsBandOfficial/

 

SIKARIO (Chile)

There’s often not much rhyme or reason behind what I choose to listen to in searching for Saturday selections, though in this case there’s a rhyme — the resemblance of this Chilean band’s name to a favorite movie of mine (Sicario).

What I found in listening to Sikario‘s new single “Odio engendrado” is a short but explosive experience, a high-octane death metal attack driven by fast percussive fusillades and neck-cracking beats, maelstroms of swarming, scathing, and skittering riffage, and monstrous roars.

The song is furious, violent, bone-breaking, but it also seems to channel desperation and pain, even in the midst of a fret-melting solo that’s hot enough to set your hair on fire.

The band describe the theme of the song, which comes through in the imagery of the accompanying video, as “all the violence that we see and live day by day from our birth to death.” It’s from their new album Re-elegant and merciless revenge, which they say will be released in January or February 2025.

https://www.sikario.cl
https://sikario.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/sikariocl
https://www.instagram.com/sikariometal

 

LABYRINTHUS STELLARUM (Ukraine)

To close this relatively brief Saturday roundup while keeping you off-balance,  I picked “Lost in the Void,” a new single by Labyrinthus Stellarum from Odesa. I see from Metal-Archives that they’ve previously released two albums, including one (Vortex of Worlds) in April of this year, but I haven’t heard those, so I took on this new song with no expectations.

But I got hooked pretty fast, thanks to the swirling ring of the futuristic opening keyboard motif, the momentous crash of the drums and cymbals, and the shrill backing scorch of the riffing. Acid-spray shrieking pierces through, along with torrential double-bass kicks, but the old-school cosmic keys (like something Vangelis might have written) remain a key presence, even when they become more drifting and dreamlike.

The band thrive on contrasts, suddenly moving from interplanetary gliding or the ping of distant radio transmissions into vast and ruinous eruptions, and back again. There’s mystery and splendor in these variations, as well as catastrophe, and even some singing and distorted speaking near the end.

https://labyrinthusstellarum.bandcamp.com/track/lost-in-the-void
https://www.facebook.com/LabyrinthusStellarum/
https://www.instagram.com/labyrinthusstellarum/