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Not content with dropping their second full-length album .- -... ... . -. -.-. . (2016) (Absence) and before that the EP's Pillars (2016) and Spire (2016), this year, Australia's enigmatic black metal duo Mesarthim are back again with another new release. The Great Filter (2016), another EP, features a single song, the band's longest track to date at 21:33 in length.
Having come away from Absence a bit disappointed given how much I like Mesarthim's debut album Isolate (2015), and by extension the very similar Pillars EP, The Great Filter finds me appreciating their work a bit more again. Still producing black metal of the cosmic variety this long track moves through various different black metal moods and even some softer sections. At one time you'll hear some spacey synths. At another there's some quite direct guitar riffs for atmospheric black metal. Another time the synths will even sound a bit techno. Then there's a section when it all noticeably speeds up. Then it goes symphonic. Later on there's a bit of Morse Code, a little throwback to the prior album no doubt. On paper it may sound as a load of little smaller ideas thrown together as one track but hey, it works and easily comes across as their most adventurous composition to date. The vocals are the usual indiscernible growl that I'm used to hearing from Mesarthim by this point. Impossible to follow, but their tortured style has always worked well with the blackened atmospheric metal they play and they got back a bit of the majestic feel of Isolate here without rehashing that album and that's definitely a plus.
The Great Filter has brought Mesarthim way back up in my estimations after I didn't enjoy Absence as much as I'd hoped to and I definitely find it to be the best of the Mesarthim 2016 releases up until this point...