It’s sad to realize that you’ve almost completely forgotten something that you learned very well (albeit in a somewhat coercive way) a few decades ago. When I saw that string of dots and dashes that represent the title of the new Mesarthim‘s album I asked myself, without thinking too much, what the hell it meant, until, after a few days, in a crevice of my increasingly narrow internal hard drive flashed a memory of the past coinciding with the period of service in the Navy, when I knew the Morse alphabet to perfection, as a radio operator. Yeah: ti-taa taa-ti-ti-ti and so on, in this case means Absence, a title and a means to convey it that fit the modus operandi of Mesarthim, mysterious Australian duo of which I had already had the opportunity to speak at the previous full length Isolate. If, at the time, I had expressed some perplexity resulting from a pleasant but not particularly incisive approach, I must admit that this time the two “dots” (which, following the logic of Morse, are equivalent to E) have made a decisive step forward. Absence, in fact, offers almost forty minutes of atmospheric black much better defined and effective: the melodic lines draw cosmic scenarios in which prevails a dreamy aspect that blast beats and scream vocals are not able to mottle much. The keyboards, above all, trace a path along which the listener is transported making him feel at ease but without skimping, however, a sense of unease resulting from the repetition of patterns not dissimilar from depressive, although much less dark and stinging in their expression. The work is really very nice, with peaks found a bit in all songs, but with special mention for the final one (-…., or 6), where the contrast between the voice and the airy harmonies becomes more intense and sharp. It’s hard to do better for those who try their hand at atmospheric black metal, although it is clear that the melodic impact of the work could be excessive for those who prefer the genre in its rawest form; also for this reason, Absence is a record that I would recommend to those who want to approach for the first time to sounds gravitating in the metal universe.

2016 – Avantgarde Music