Mesarthim - The Degenerate Era

By Calen Henry. The meta is extremely consistent for Mesarthim albums. A new one drops with no warning, giving no information, with a title referencing an esoteric cosmic concept. It always musically iterates on the last album but remains extremely divisive in the metal community and it always gets a nice dynamic master.

By Calen Henry.

The meta is extremely consistent for Mesarthim albums. A new one drops with no warning, giving no information, with a title referencing an esoteric cosmic concept. It always musically iterates on the last album but remains extremely divisive in the metal community and it always gets a nice dynamic master. The Degenerate Era is no different. It's the band's space trance metal at its finest and this time the cosmic concept refers to the cosmic era after the current one, when protons will decay leaving nothing but black holes, presumably what is shown in the album art.

Despite being the opener, the three part "Laniakea" is the album's centerpiece. The title refers to the Laniakea supercluster of galaxies, of which the Milky Way is part. The movements refer to the Great Attractor, the central gravitational point in the supercluster, the Zone of Avoidance, the portion of the cluster that is obscured from view from earth, and Dark Energy that is hypothesized to ultimately tear apart the Laniakea supercluster.

Underneath these cosmic trappings The Degenerate Era continues the shift towards more epic lead-guitar driven songs that started on Ghost Condensate while also harkening back to the more symphonic sound of .- -​.​.​. .​.​. . -. -​.​-​. .(Absence). Track length also splits the difference between those two albums with one 14 minute suite and four tracks ranging in length from four to almost nine minutes. Though the shift and references back through the band's catalog are almost seamless, there are a few transitions on The Degenerate Era that seem to lean to far on stop time, with just a fraction of a second too much space before the next passage begins, something I didn't hear on any prior releases. It can't hold back the album's epic heights, though, with great riffs and leads and the return of pick slides giving it a weird, but great, space punk edge.

Though it's impossible to discern the actual lyrics for a Mesarthim album, there's clearly a cohesive concept. From the album title through the "Laniakea" suite to the album closer "618" (a reference to one of the largest known supermassive black holes) complete with a Morse code message spelling out "Planet Nine Located", there are mysteries yet to discover in The Degenerate Era and the dynamic master (DR 12) makes repeated listens a joy.

Mesarthim - Ghost Condensate

With no advance warning Mesarthim, Australia’s highly prolific anonymous space black metal duo, recently released Ghost Condensate, their fourth full length in five years. Despite the speed of their releases Mesarthim’s quality has remained consistent and their sound has evolved considerably

By Calen Henry.


With no advance warning Mesarthim, Australia’s highly prolific anonymous space black metal duo, recently released Ghost Condensate [Editor's note: the review was written in April], their fourth full length in five years. Despite the speed of their releases Mesarthim’s quality has remained consistent and their sound has evolved considerably without losing their signature (and divisive) sound.

The group's 2015 debut, Isolate, introduced the duo’s mix of atmospheric black metal, howling vocals, and spacey synths evoking vintage science fiction and science documentaries. Subsequent releases added to that sound expanding the sonic palette with full blown techno interludes and more melodic lead work on the metal side.

Ghost Condensate furthers this evolution. It draws the most inspiration from their 2016 EP, The Great Filter where they first really dove into the epic. The result is more vintage space opera than science documentary. Ghost Condensate is rife with epic guitar riffs and leads, even breaking out a pick scrape into a face-melting solo, not to mention some truly epic twin guitars. The band’s trademark synths support the guitars while also being given time to shine in ambient and techno interludes

Their fourth album delivers exactly what fans expect from Mesarthim, without rehashing previous releases. Those that object to their mix of synth and metal won’t be won over, but fans of less atmospheric metal that weren’t convinced by their earlier work should check out their current incarnation.

Mesarthim - The Density Parameter

By Calen Henry. True to form, Mesarthim dropped their third full length, in the middle of the (Australian) night with no fanfare. Following Isolate, .- -​.​.​. .​.​. . -. -​.​-​. . (Absence), and five EPs The Density Parameter continues their

By Calen Henry.


True to form, Mesarthim dropped their third full length, in the middle of the (Australian) night with no fanfare. Following Isolate, .- -​.​.​. .​.​. . -. -​.​-​. . (Absence), and five EPs The Density Parameter continues their synthey exploration of the outer reaches of black metal.

Despite their relatively niche sound, Mesarthim have a diverse back catalog and The Density Parameter pulls from it all, melding searing black metal with the spacious synth sounds from Isolate, the more orchestral sound of .- -​.​.​. .​.​. . -. -​.​-​. ., and the lush, driving synths of the later EPs, especially The Great Filter.

As always it's a space suit gloved middle finger to metal genre conventions and an excellent album. Plus, listeners who stay right to the end will, once again, be rewarded with an album closing Morse code message. The payoff is worth decoding it.

Mesarthim - The Great Filter

By Calen Henry. Mesarthim's first record, Isolate, took Bandcamp by storm in 2015, with little to no fanfare. The innocuous band and album name, accompanied by a NASA photo of the Horsehead Nebula hid a gem— cosmic black metal with a commitment to "spacey" that no other band has equaled. It mixed blistering black metal, throat shredding vocals and epic lead guitars

By Calen Henry.


Mesarthim's first record, Isolate, took Bandcamp by storm in 2015, with little to no fanfare. The innocuous band and album name, accompanied by a NASA photo of the Horsehead Nebula hid a gem— cosmic black metal with a commitment to "spacey" that no other band has equaled. It mixed blistering black metal, throat shredding vocals and epic lead guitars with synths straight out of a high school science video. Though polarizing, the approach works fantastically and Mesarthim's subsequent output schedule has been as astonishing as the quality and growth through the releases. In one year they released two full length records, two EPs, and a single.

Absence, the band’s sophomore album, didn't completely change their approach but did show them using more varied synths with more emulation of real instruments instead strictly bleeping and blooping. It gave the record a full symphonic feel that really rounded out their sound. The Great Filter furthers that approach but also varies the guitar technique making it, so far, the absolute best release by the band and my personal favourite EP of 2016.

The shift in guitar playing is subtle mainly adds one radically different technique, palm muting. The entire EP, a single 21 minute track is composed around a central palm muted guitar riff that is repeated through various movements and instruments. This riff is unlike anything else by Mesarthim and would sound right at home on a Moonsorrow record. That riff anchors all the other trademark Mesarthim tricks into an utterly engrossing long-form track. (it's only twice as long as many of the tracks on Isolate, mind, so not that long by the band's standards.)

The sheer variety of sonic palettes coupled with the deft handling of transitions makes the extreme musical culture clash all the more apparent and all the more natural. The central riff is shuffled from guitar to emulated string orchestra, and through some of the spacier synth patches occasionally giving way to full on electronic passages, trademark Mesarthim since Isolate. The best, and most far out transitions are done by way of a totally punk rock pick slide that shouldn't work at all but does, like Mesarthim as a whole.

The whole idea shouldn’t work, but not only does it work, it’s phenomenal. Also, like all Mesarthim releases, its $1 USD. Buy it. Space metal doesn't get any better.

A Flare in the Northern Sky - Cosmic Black Metal Roundup

By Calen Henry. Upon reflection it’s not actually all that surprising that there’s so much space themed black metal. After all, when one tires of trying to capture the sound of a cold Scandinavian forest

By Calen Henry.

Upon reflection it’s not actually all that surprising that there’s so much space themed black metal. After all, when one tires of trying to capture the sound of a cold Scandinavian forest what’s colder than the void of space? Travel with me through the void as I present some of my picks.

Cover art by Luciana Nedelea

This is the album that started me down the rabbit hole of cosmic black metal and still my favourite. Phobos Monolith mixes blistering tremolo riffs over lightning blast-beats with soaring melodic leads and spacey ambient passages to come up with Blut Aus Nord from space. My only complaint is that the programmed drums can’t keep up with the astounding quality of the rest of the music but that’s hardly the musician’s fault.

Mesarthim takes an almost comically obvious route of combining black metal with cheesy new age keyboard riffs. It’s like the soundtrack to an 80’s science documentary by Emperor. The ridiculous thing is it works incredibly well. This is partly due to the excellent composition in both the black metal and synth parts ending up with something like “black metal Muse” and partly due to the utter commitment in the vocals. The album is also DR 11 meaning very little dynamic range compression was used, making it sound excellent.

Daharaka is Turkish for “blacker” and he certainly is. Unlike some of the other cosmic black metal artists Daharaka sounds like second wave black metal played from space. His guitars and riffs are fuzzy and amorphous but rather than take the kvlt route of trebling it’s guts out he’s applied some effects that give similar results but sound very spacey. There’s something slightly off with the vocals that prevent me from outright loving the album but his unique approach deserves to be experienced. Trve kvlt space metal.

Cover painting by Brian Smith ("By Midnight", 2010)

Tome of the Unreplenished takes the tried and true melodic black metal approach of bands like Rotting Christ and Thou Art Lord and takes it to space. Complete with chanting and “Hellenic” tremolo riffs.

Cover art by Dis Pater

Midnight Odyssey leans more towards the ambient and slow side of things that the other bands on this list for a sound that’s kind of “blackened Enya”. Be warned, though, the album is ridiculously long; 2 hours and 20 minutes.