Bandcamp Mirror of Deception have been playing doom out of Esslingen since 1990, long enough that guitarist Jochen Fopp also runs the Doom Shall Rise festival, and Transience is the sound of a band with nothing left to prove deciding to risk something anyway. This is their sixth album, and it pushes their traditional roots into more melodic, atmospheric, faintly Scandinavian-folk-touched territory, sombre and wistful where you might expect monolithic. Most strikingly, it contains the first song in the band’s history to use guttural vocals, and that single decision tells you everything about where their heads are at after thirty years.
The writing is mature and unhurried. “Death, Deliver Us” opens with the album’s best production, punchy and balanced, the transients left to breathe so the modern loudness never flattens into a brickwall, the guitars articulate even at speed, the vocals sitting properly inside the mix rather than perched on top. “Currents” is the clearest statement of intent, an organic, uncompressed piece that lets the dynamics swing between dense passages and stripped, atmospheric clean-guitar stretches, the melodies carrying real melancholy. When the band balance their new aggression against their old sense of space, as on the wide atmospheric build of “The Sands,” the record has a genuine sombre beauty.
The new guttural vocals are the album’s most divisive move, and honestly they do not always land, the harsher melodies sitting slightly at odds with the wistful instrumental tone underneath them. It is a brave experiment more than a fully solved one. The production wobbles too: a few tracks (“Haven,” “Slow Winds,” “Consumed”) get pushed louder and denser, the low mids stacking up and the cymbals tipping into harshness, the reverb washing the rhythm section back. These are real reservations, but they are the reservations of a band reaching rather than coasting.
What carries Transience past them is conviction and craft. This is a doom record that refuses to simply re-run 1995, threading folk melody and atmospheric weight through songs that feel lived-in and genuinely moving, and it has been rightly well received. Too melodic for the purists and not riff-active enough for the headbangers, maybe, but for anyone who wants doom with grey-sky emotional depth and the nerve to evolve in public, this is one of the year’s quietly rewarding listens.
Melodic, atmospheric doom from long-running German veterans, pushing their traditional roots toward sombre, folk-touched, faintly Scandinavian melancholy, and introducing guttural vocals alongside the cleans for the first time in the band’s history. The best tracks (“Death, Deliver Us”, “Currents”) are well produced, punchy and balanced, the master left uncrushed so the dynamics breathe and the vocals sit inside the mix. Dynamic contrast between dense passages and stripped atmospheric clean-guitar stretches is the album’s strength. The reservations: the new guttural vocals sit slightly at odds with the wistful instrumental tone and do not always land, and a few tracks (“Haven”, “Slow Winds”, “Consumed”) are pushed louder and denser, with low-mid stacking, harsh cymbals and reverb washing the rhythm section back. Mature, sombre and genuinely moving despite the rough edges of a band still evolving.
Standout tracks: Currents, Death Deliver Us, The Sands
