origin: AUS
email: thevokabz@hotmail.com
website: mekigah.bandcamp.com
website: facebook/mekigah

Mekigah is an effusion of sounds emanating from a dark turbulent vortex.

Mekigah first began as a band and creative entity as far back as 2008.
The first album The Serpent's Kiss was worked on meticulously by Vis Ortis & Krytpus over a few years, before being self released by the band in 2010 as a limited cd run.
Work on album two The Necessary Evil began almost immediately and developed fairly quickly in comparison the debut – once again it was self released on CD.
These first two albums formed the foundation of developing the bands sound, along with getting the music heard and spread through reviewers, radio, other bands & distributors. Through this whole period there was no thought to live performance.

Vis Ortis then began work on the third album, which stalled slightly due to the search for continued collaboration - but ultimately Mekgiah formed into a solo project and Vis Ortis took the reins and wrote the entire third album Litost alone.
Whereas the previous two albums had focused more on gothic doom metal rock arrangements alongside varieties of cleaner singing, harsh vocals & spoken word, Litost almost completely abandons this in favour of a far slower, uglier and experimental doom and noise. Vocals are used more as noise elements with only brief appearances by any cleaner vocals. Whilst arrangements in general are far less traditional than the band had created before.

This same approach and progressive creative attitude then flowed into the fourth album Autexousious, with even less doom metal arrangements, along with fewer vocals, giving way to harsher, noisier, freeform madness.
These two albums marked the beginning of relationship with Aesthetic Death, who released both albums on CD.

After a unplanned hiatus, with a few years working on several other bands & projects, along with a few false starts to a 5th album - eventually To Hold Onto a Heartless Heart was created. Vis Ortis clearly not looking to replicate what had come before and not interested in building upon the previous sounds (for now) this album was slow to get underway
but eventually built momentum as soon as the first lengthy track Collapsing Under was complete. This seemed to unlock what was required for the rest of the album to unfold and start to fall into place.
More straight forward passages of faster riffing, upbeat but sparse, with untechnical raw drumming
Sudden changes and shapeshifting in often random ways to sections of soundscape noise, morbid doom & relentless walls of frequencies, which are all designed to overwhelm the senses but also to challenge on repeated listens, to unravel and appreciate all the layers going on.
The few lyrics that exist on this album are like shards of emotions that don't contain an entire sentence but capture the core of the thought behind them.

For the first time Vis Ortis invited long time friend Leigh Ritson to collaborate on all tracks,
providing not only piano, synth & noisescapes but extensive audio knowledge from years as a sound mixer.
Working with Aesthetic Death with a CD release due for release in August 2024, THOTAHH provides yet another insight into the long term vision of Mekigah that even though 5 albums in, is still only beginning to unfold all it's dimensions.