MMTH – Infinite Heights
Release Date: 17th November 2023
Label: Poly Unique
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Rock, Ambient, Instrumental Rock, Experimental Rock.
FFO: 65daysofstatic, Coastlands.
Review By: Andy Spoon
The title Infinite Heights is an apt one for MMTH’s most recent offering. There is no doubt that the overall tenseness of the album is sufficiently displayed from the earliest moment possible. It’s almost like the audible and the visual possess a discriminant link through the grisled-bass guitar, the soggy guitar, and the snare hit that feels sharp as a scalpel in the middle of the fuzzy, mashed-potato-ey heaviness.
Onions and Ogres have distinct layers. Of that, we cannot argue. But it occurs to me that MMTH’s entire “thing” is to build layers of tracks that each display their own uniqueness to the specific track to which they are adhered. Tracks tend to bounce happily between time signatures, forming discreet peaks and plateaus of musical prose that might take the form of a refrain in 7/8 time before reverting back to 6/8 for the “meat” of the tracks’ hook.
There are moments of clarity on the lead guitar, the front “voice” of the instrumental tracks. Phrasing and repetition tend to lend themselves to certain elements of the hook, indicating that, perhaps, a loop device was used in assistance of writing many of the tracks. From this element, I was heavily reminded of the same style of patterns that often perform duties with 65daysofstatic, or perhaps El Ten Eleven.
There exists, on some level, a heavy influence from the older guitar gods, such as David Gilmour, Steve Vai, or even Satriani. Lead guitars don’t tend to follow the ‘heavy’ post-metal genre on many of the tracks, leaving the listener to wonder what the writers might’ve been thinking or taking at the inception of the musical idea.
The overall musical experience is meant to be somewhat productive, insofar as ideas go. I believe that the visions which the artist intends to impute are ones that tend to go along with the great, towering IMAX panning-shots of landscapes, colossal mountains, endless fields, vast oceana, small white quartz stones on fields of slate battered by waves. No, music doesn’t “take you places”. A person’s mind is only as productive as the thoughts they are willing to entertain in a moment. However, music has the ability to build a bridge between an emotion, a feeling, and the senses which perceive that music.
Infinite Heights is an album that’s meant to pour fuel on an imagination on fire, a cloudy head of Indica, or perhaps a desire to inspire the soundtrack of the mind. It’s not hard to see that the convergence of the abstract, ethereal, or the supernatural is the intended conveyance that MMTH has produced. Whether it is shoegaze noise, heavy metal, or post metal, MMTH dip their musical toes into the mix of styles as they deliver a generally-consistent sound, despite the differences in minutiae from track to track.
Occasionally, the repetition gets annoying, or the band miss an opportunity for a flourish the listener might be anticipating, lending evidence to some argument that the album won’t reach everyone in the same way. Nothing on the album opens any doors to another dimension of sound or physics. Nevertheless, MMTH builds an intensity which is engaging, leading the listener along with constant tension and relief, something that will certainly bring a degree of enjoyment that rivals bands like 65daysofstatic.
(3.5 / 5)
