If you fancy a bit of noise and distortion, Mekigah is probably not a bad place to come. I did review the album “Litost” and that was something to have to get your head round, but that was in 2015. The project of Vis Ortis, “To Hold Onto a Heartless Heart” is the band’s fifth album release.

When I saw that one of the collaborators was accredited with “saw”, I imagined it to be an acronym for a guitar or something. Well, it’s an actual saw but true to form the appropriately-titled “Collapsing Under” is dominated by the wavy sound of insects or maybe night-time wildlife, howls and a distorted, incoherent piano. That’s just for starters. As expected, layers of sound are superimposed on each other. As the busy goings-on murkily fill the background, desperately dark doom comes to the fore. I recall making a previous comparison with Blut aus Nord and it’s equally valid here with its industrial depiction of a terrible underworld. We head off electronically but in a dark and certainly not clear way. To terrible and echoing roars, the intensity and tempo crank up … and make way for a series of obscure and sinister soundwaves featuring a distant guitar. Only the drum remains constant. The cacophony continues. It’s impressive in its blend of oceanic and symphonic sounds. “Aural claustrophobia” is a term that’s used to describe this. We are drowned in these expansive noises and then it ends. I am none the wiser 14 minutes on but it’s interesting from an experimental and atmospheric standpoint.

Alien noises form the backdrop of “Broken Rhythm Pressure” along with a cronky piano. Normality does not resume moments later as the “music” consists of a series of bleak, harsh, industrial type sounds – distorted of course – and the ghostly vocal accompaniment smacks of suffering and pain. We encounter the mechanical sounds of a steel mill – what else? The thronging noise is still there. I’m hanging on and still interested. Oh for something normal. Well we’re not going to get it. Black ambient noise – let’s give it a name – now stands behind the black industrial sound of “Away Drifting From”. The echoing, reverberating, sound-enhanced voice reinforces the torture and suffering. The drum pumps its beat out apocalyptically and mercilessly. The drift is towards a void, or that’s the impression given. The echoing instrument somehow creates a tune but this music brings no happiness. “An Infinitesimal Difference” almost has an air of symphony about it but such thoughts of cohesion soon die away as the squealings of industrial sounds and periodically pounding drum continue to recreate a terrifying scene. Ambient it may be after a fashion, but it doesn’t really add anything. The machine is then back in action but this is a wobbly machine with a mind of its own.

“It Hisses So” drives forwards in the most ghastly way. The vocals add to the sense of fear and dominance. The best way I can describe the progress of muddled sounds is grey. It’s a grey world with lurking unidentifiable terrors, all wrapped in cacophonous noise. Did I hear the word “chaotic?” This whole thing is about chaos, and the representation of it. The sound becomes more wayward and obscure. Sombrely we enter the final phase and “Eyes Glazed Over” – maybe an unfortunate title if you don’t like this. The ambient noise distortion certainly has a hypnotic quality. But off our ghoulish friends in the vocal department go marching to war, or that’s the impression until the mood changes and the ominous drum and sound-affected voices make it appear that war has turned to carnage. It all goes on bleakly and incomprehensibly, the drum ratcheting up a bit amid the sounds of extreme chaos.

You’ll probably gather that this isn’t easy listening. Whether “To Hold On To a Heartless Heart” has enough artistic merit to be worth listening to is really the choice of the listener. If you like something that fits into the box of extreme experimental noise, then it’s fine. I did find this album inventive and consistent in its ability to depict the atmosphere of a world where no-one would ever want to go. It’s psychological torture and maybe that’s the point.

(6.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/Mekigah

https://mekigah.bandcamp.com/album/to-hold-onto-a-heartless-heart

https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php?mode=singleitem&albumid=6474