Valkyrian Music

Mefitic
Woes of Mortal Devotion
Released 15th June 2015
Death Metal
Released via Nuclear War Now! Productions

‘Woes of Mortal Devotion’ is the debut album from the Italian death metal band Mefitic. The band was formed back in 2004 and has released a few demos along with one limited edition EP. Oddly enough I recently visited the band’s home town of Bergamo – a beautiful place and probably not the first location that comes to mind when you hear the term “death metal”. So before I start sounding like a holiday advert for Bergamo, here’s what I thought of Mefitic’s album:

After a rather slow intro, ‘Grievous Subsidence‘ blasts its way through the speakers with a wall of brutal riffs, powerful drums and the standard guttural growling typically associated with the genre. What’s not so typical is the ponderous “buzzing”sound that the guitar makes towards the end, prolonging the song rather unnecessarily. The speed of the music  varies from fast to mid-paced, making it more akin to the blackened death metal style of bands like Archgoat and mid-career Behemoth than old school death metal.

‘Noxious Epiclesis‘ is a good example of the faster, blackened death metal variety while other tracks such as ‘The Tomb of Amaleq‘ remind me of established brutal death metal bands like Nile. Then there’s ‘Pain‘ which features some very brief, thrash metal style guitar riffs half way through the track. Yet that part is so short it’s easy to miss.

Overall, the main problem that I have with this album is that a lot of the songs sound similar. In many cases you can barely tell where one song ends and a new one begins. As far as death metal or blackened death metal goes it’s nothing ground-breaking, I’ve heard better but I’ve also heard a lot worse.

3.5/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 31st May 2015 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Death Metal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.