Beats and yelling: Mefitis

The Skorian // The Greyleer
Out 29^th November on Profound Lore Records

The existence of Mefitis within extreme metal is in many ways metatextual. They imbibe its raw materials only to churn it up into a cocktail of inuendo, subversion, duality of meaning that would go largely unnoticed by anyone not intimate with the legacy they grew out of. Given that the heart of this project rests on tonal ambiguity, and phrase clusters very few of which are returned to, they lack any broad populist appeal. Their music is in part a commentary on music itself, or at least extreme metal. The material is dense, littered with footnotes, references, and critiques of other works. In this sense they mirror the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and are derided by many for similar reasons. Enjoyment is an afterthought in light of the larger project of twisting forms to breaking point.

It is for this reason that they lack the quirky fanfare usually associated with avant-garde metal, thus excluding them from the attentions of metal’s fair weather friends, interested only in novelty as an end in itself. At the other end however, the fact that their music is an aggressive complex of ambiguities excludes them from gaining traction on the Bandcamp underground airwaves. And indeed, owing to the accolades they have received from their target audience of experienced extreme metal fans hungry for new paths within the genre, a third portion of the potential fandom has dismissed them as musician’s music, superfluous, or otherwise sterile and overwrought.

Of their now three full lengths, the debut, 2019’s ‘Emberdawn’ shadows classic death metal the closest. Yet it remained striking in its ability to gouge open the ambiguity at the heart of Finnish death metal in particular, awakening an unused potential through ponderous chromaticism and an opening of the narrative form into new, uncharted territory for metal in their refusal to recapitulate themes in a manner many death metal fans are accustomed to. 2021’s ‘Offscourings’ zoomed in on these latter features, and represents the perfect execution of a very specific idea. Much like a piece of surrealism, it used classic techniques to make strange aspects of extreme metal normalised by time and overuse, refracting them back in angular, disjointed, or otherwise disconcerting forms. In stepping away from even covert references to classic Weird death metal (Demilich, early At the Gates, Gorguts etc.), ‘Offscourings’ represented a piece of avant-garde metal in the truest sense of the word, a commentary on the form conducted through the very techniques and tropes of this form. In this sense, one might hesitate to call it an enjoyable listen, and certainly not one whose meaning would be easily graspable for metal’s increasingly casualised fandom. But lest I be accused of rank pretension, I must quickly remark that it’s not simply the case that one has to be intimate with the history of extreme metal in order to “get” Mefitis. Critique on their terms is possible and indeed has been forthcoming from some circles of experienced fans, who accuse Mefitis of either misunderstanding their source material, or going too far in attempting to break the narrative form, in essence creating a head without a heart.

Into this context a new Mefitis has emerged, one apparently keen to escape the bubble of underground navel gazing and cast a wider net. If ‘Offscourings’ was a study in chromaticism, ambiguity, and structural warping at the molecular level, ‘The Skorian // The Greyleer’ zooms out to survey a larger terrain. In part this is to be expected given that this is essentially two EPs mashed together into a single work. But there seems to be an explicit effort on the part of Mefitis to normalise their calling cards. Tonal ambiguity remains, as does a compositional density not to be digested lightly. This is still very much a product of the “dark metal” vision.  

But signs of a more outward looking entity are apparent from the fact that different elements of ‘The Skorian // The Greyleer’ are instantly traceable to antecedents across contemporary extreme metal, something that was certainly not true of ‘Offscourings’ in any obvious sense. But (being metatextual) this is no garden variety genre alchemy. They ingest source material rather than reference it, like that coffee made from cherries digested by civet monkeys.

One can recognise melodic black metal, a striking amount of gothic metal (calling to mind the leftfield undulations of Pik more than Paradise Lost), and plenty of regal death metal holdovers, but they have all been reconfigured into entities capable of breathing in the atmosphere on planet Mefitis. Ambiguous, unpredictable, dense, and teasing. Contorted toward resolutions that never arrive. The throughline is wont to unexpectedly veer toward a theme that at first looked merely incidental, only for the loose fragment to flower into an entirely new chapter, dispensing with the preceding material just as the conscious mind dispenses with the fading imagery of a dream.

It is precisely this trait that many find frustrating about Mefitis, and are perhaps liable to decry this album more so than previous efforts on these grounds. It adds to the list of charges an unapologetically extravagant presentation, opulent and lavish. But one person’s weakness is another’s strength. The Mefitis journey to date has undoubtably been intriguing, but at times perhaps too esoteric for its own good, hence my frustration that the wider scene’s uptake of this artist has been slow to non-existent. Here we see Mefitis turn outwards, extending olive branches to various chapters of the metal church without compromising their uncanny, futurist vision for the genre.

Identity, world building, tonal language, and clear artistic and intellectual designs on genre as a meaningful form of communication through music. These are the things that made the giants of extreme metal in the early 90s heyday unique and enduring. All are things sorely lacking in the current social media scorched landscape. Mefitis may be a rich, calorific experience not to be undertaken lightly (nor often), but they reman unique for continuing to expand their sound world in new and unexpected directions whilst engaging in a thought provoking dialogue with extreme metal itself.