Five tracks of masterful, ritualistic, and pitch-black evil make up the entirety of Ng’ambu - an album which is meant to be interpreted as a hymnal to invoke and praise spirits - shows the band drenched in offerings to the bands personal connection and dedication to Quimbanda, the Afro-Brazilian diasporic belief system based around magic, rituals, and offerings. The band explains, “It is both an offering to our Cabula, that is our house, as it is to the spirits of Quimbanda themselves. In some sense we are turning what could otherwise be poison into medicine. It is a process of engaging, through struggle, with those aspects of ourselves and the world which live at the pivot point of chance and desire. It is about seeking agency even in the thistles of the road. Quimbanda is the fire by which we forge our iron and the strangling plantst that cure disease. Quimbanda is both the pox and the inoculation. Quimbanda is our anxiety and the motivation that anxiety produces. It is conflict and the strength that comes from engaging that conflict. People say, idle hands are the devil’s plaything, and so we have put those hands and The Devil to work.” For the band's sophomore release, MEHENET connects a powerful fury of black metal mastery to the deeply rooted sounds of New Orleans - by way of utilizing samples of the bustling French Quarter and by paying respect and praise to the cultural music of the city by incorporating congas, whistles, and bells. Recorded and mixed in 2019 by James Whitten at High Tower Recording in New Orleans, LA
