This is Mesmur’s second album. They’re an international band and play atmospheric death/doom metal.
Featuring members of Dalla Nebbia, Mesmur play death/doom that offers the listener a little bit more than what they might usually expect to find for something with that appellation.
S combines funeral doom, death/doom, and post-metal into 53 minutes of apocalyptic despair. Think a mix of Monolithe and Esoteric, with a touch of some of Neurosis‘ more suffocating sludgy work. Crushing and monolithic, this is an album that’s as heavy as a planet and as dense as a neutron star.
The guitars offer ample distortion as well as some engaging melodies. The omnipresent synths sometimes turn to static, as if the band are intentionally channelling the cosmic background radiation into their music to further enhance the feelings of exploring deep and lonely space. By themselves both guitars and synths are highly effective at what they do. However, taken together they work so well that sometimes they seem to fuse into one atmospheric whole, drawing the listener in as they’re brutalised by deep deathgrowls.
This is music to gaze at the night sky to. While the oppressive nature of the limitless void crushes in on you, you feel hopeless and insignificant, especially as the cosmic grandeur of S unfolds around you with colossal grandeur and hideous beauty. Mesmur have crafted this music well, and it’s as devastatingly expansive as it is inhumanly unforgiving.
I like a good bit of death/doom, especially when it’s stretched out to epic lengths, has an apocalyptic funeral streak, and is heavily atmospheric. Mesmur don’t just hit the spot, they crush it utterly.
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