Mefitic - Woes of Mortal Devotion

MEFITIC - Woes of Mortal Devotion (NWN! CD 2015)

This album gets better and better and with every next listen I feel like its suffocating, sepulchral aura swallows me more and more. I drown in these eerie, morbid sounds and I love this feeling a lot. Really this is one of those albums, which I play so many times that even my neighbours will know every sound from it. And the best thing is that I didn't even expect Mefitic to be that bloody good. I got this album very late, almost two years since its release and I didn't even know any of the previous Mefitic recordings. But believe me, the influence "Woes of Mortal Devotion" has on me is enormous and I love this album. 

What Mefitic plays is an astonishing mixture of death and black metal, with that truly dense, sepulchral wall of sound that gives you almost claustrophobic feeling. They definitely have a lot in common with such bands as Grave Miasma, Demonomancy, Mitochondrion, Impetuous Ritual, Antediluvian, Paroxsihzem, Altarage and so on... Obviously Incantation has a huge influence as well. I believe that all these bands created something new - a new sound and quality - within the perishing catacombs of death / black metal and such Mefitic is one of the finest examples for that. Thick, slightly monotonous riffage, which combines heaviness and cavernous sound with reverb, especially on the ghastly vocals, create almost hypnotizing aura. Their songs have also a ritualistic aura, so they're almost like eerie prayer hymns, with that obscure and malicious concept, all based on death. Do not get fooled by thinking that "Woes of Mortal Devotion" sounds too monotonous and one dimensional, with the same structure, etc, because you need to fully get into the music, to pick up all these details, some great arrangements, ideas, riffs, killer vocal lines and so on. Besides, they keep a good balance between faster and almost doomy tunes, so the album is very absorbing. If I would have to pick up a couple of songs that I especially loved, then the crushing slow / mid paced "Pain" and "The Swirling Columns of Staleness" or the mutilating "Noxious Epiclesis" do fuckin sound amazing. It's like a journey into the abyss and believe me, it will be painful!  

I love the production of the album also, it's so damn heavy, so every song sounds massive and powerful... and the artwork is also pretty damn good, so basically everything about "Woes of Mortal Devotion" is perfect. Sadly, I don't know any of Mefitic previous releases, so I cannot make comparisons between them, but I really wanna know if such quality was ever present in their music.  

Standout tracks: "Pain", "The Swirling Columns of Staleness", "Noxious Epiclesis" 

Final rate: 85/100