The Invisible Oranges metal site has posted a stream of a track from the upcoming new album, Ng’ambu, from New Orleans’ Mehenet a band featuring O.T.O. initiates. Invisible Oranges posted this statement from the band about the track:
“Dona Sete throbs with Life and Desire. She is the one who arrives full of lust and ambition, with a critical discernment, with absolute command; a destroyer of limitations. We consider this song our flagship for the new album because she represents the Queen of our work and is the animating fire embroiling underneath the rest of the album. We introduce the world using more traditional drumming and salutes rather than straight forward blast beats. Lyrically we salute our godfather, past mothers and fathers, the house, and of course our own spirits in general. In the first couple of verses we pay homage to
previous well known pontos cantados (praise songs – invocations) and then move on to our own reflections on the manifesting force Dona Sete brings. We specifically felt called to draw attention to Pomba Gira as she relates to the Red Sun, Tukula. Pomba Gira is the animating and spinning fire at the crossroads of eternity. While we might see four distinct moments in time and in our life; where we might celebrate the mysteries of distinct peak expressions of death and renewal; she arrives with the continuous snail spiral which eternally recurs about the whole of the dikenga.
“With Dona Sete, by her força, what is dead comes back, what was defeated is now crowned and conquering, what is Woman becomes ineffable and yet somehow remains intensely visceral. In the previous album we meditated on the dead, on dead mysteries, on a dying history, on the neglected and the desire for revolution. In this album the dead are fed and awakened and given new purpose. Here we have the power to make silence shake and darkness enlighten. The dead are not morbid – they laugh as their bones are stirred. They are people of a very quiet place. They do not possess us with nostalgic memories. They have come to manifest new possibilities, to challenge our assumptions and our self impositions. They have given themselves in service to new life, to new struggles, to new choices. They will open roads for some and they will definitely close the roads for others. Dona Sete stands solid in her power with the adulation of many. Where do we stand with her? Are we with the dead or the living? Or are these one throbbing heart, the systole and diastole of our desires for continuance and agency. Salve!”
Ng’ambu releases September 10th, 2021 via Gilead Media (CD) and Stygian Black Hand (cassette).
Give a listen:
https://www.invisibleoranges.com/mehenet-dona-sete/.
