Mesektet - Towards A Bleak Sun

Taking queues from Ancient Egyptian mythology, Mesektet has crafted a dark ambient/drone album that features six tracks of ominous and ill-will sounds that reek of curiosity, exploration, and ominous carvings. As the artist describes:

"The name 'Mesektet' comes from one of the two boats which the Egyptian solar deity Ra travelled in: Mandjet was his 'morning boat', and Mesektet the 'evening boat'. Ra used Mesektet as a boat to travel back to the Netherworld from a long day of shining. "

With his inspirations clear, a six track, forty six minute session of lurking tunes were crafted to reflect lost tombs and isolated burials. Aken begins us off on this journey, a deep pitch crawling in to set the base tone for the rest of the song. With seldom a sound breaking off to create a bit of a difference, the song was boring; nice and heavy, perilous, but bland and tasteless at the same time.

Silent Giants comes in next, with a cavernous sound that echoes every sound that plays out from a far off distance. Still drone, but moving more than previous and setting shifts between heavy and light, little electronic effects slush in and out. But, once more, though this track does provide more content than the first, a bit of a repetition effort is hit, and makes the song fall a little flat.

Sea Of Dust also hits right in the marks of the first two. While haunting and well done, the sounds can only hold over so long before disappearing into a vat of nothingness; the song needs more to shape it up rather than sticking to the same note and not necessarily working with it to make it more exciting.

Burial Of The Sun sticks mainly to a steady drone note, but it changes every so often here and there. Sometimes calming off very atmospheric, other times dulling down to minimal sound. However, this was nothing that I haven't heard before, and therefore remained somewhat stagnant.

Hollow Monoliths I could say much the same about; very well crafted sounds with minimal interruptions in the drawn out drone notes, but, then again, not much else happens with it. The last track on the album, Forgotten Tomb goes out with a bit of a cavernous sound and a few drum notes that sound faded and far off, but reverberate nicely into the speakers.

Now, as much as I enjoyed the sounds and drone notes created by Mesektet, I do also have to put out a little disappointment on what was brought. His sound is clear and well made; the quality level was nice and the noise that held out in my ears was good. However, where he lacks is in content; the songs have great drone notes which are fairly easy to deliver; but, they need more than to just drag out for so long. They need more substance to deliver apart from so many other like minded projects; dig deeper into Ancient Egyptian culture, find out what instruments they used, maybe. Implement them to give the project a more organic feel. This project is lurking on the corner of shattering expectations, but just isn't quite there as of yet. Aug 18 2014