{"id":600316,"date":"2026-04-11T15:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/600316\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:46:19","slug":"mirror-of-deception-transience-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/600316\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror of Deception – Transience Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As much as metal is a niche interest (at least in my part of the world), it is a vast ecosystem. Following it is a joy, but it\u2019s always a bit humbling to come across a group you\u2019ve never heard of with a long history. Mirror of Deception have been around since 1993. Transience is their sixth full-length release, and even this blog has not heard their name up until this point. That can be a bit daunting as a reviewer, lacking context and missing a big element of what makes a band their band. On the other hand, I get an opportunity to listen to some classic-style doom metal and just kind of say what I think and see how this review ends up from there. So that\u2019s the plan! Let\u2019s listen to some doom metal.<\/p>\n

Transience treads an interesting line between doom and more traditional metal. Conceptually, it\u2019s a fairly bleak listen, with intense riffs driving urgency, despair, and anger. Michael Siffermann and Jochen Fopp are strong guitarists, whether channeling dramatic endings, as in the bleak \u201cHaven,\u201d or broader, slower peaks in \u201cThe Sands.\u201d On the other hand, their music is lively; Uwe Kurz\u2019s drumming is dynamic and animated, Pascal Schrade\u2019s bass comparatively bright across Transience\u2019s gritty, aggrieved sound. The aforementioned \u201cThe Sands\u201d is a good example; for four minutes, Mirror of Deception play a dramatic, slow-build, mid-tempo song that then transforms with a lively, almost bright riff that jumps up that tempo and really gets the head nodding. It all fits, and it all works\u2014an often-woeful, sometimes brighter skip across doom themes with a lively backdrop that comes from confidence and experience.<\/p>\n

Transience by Mirror of Deception<\/a><\/p>\n

What fit less well, I\u2019m sad to say, are the vocal melodies. I\u2019m not sure who, between Schrade and Siffermann, is the lead vocalist, but his singing is over-produced and at odds with the music behind him. Opener \u201cDeath, Deliver Us,\u201d for example, is a dark, heavy, distorted soundscape of anguish, but the singing consistently fails to match that atmosphere. I was surprised to read the lyrics to the song, in fact, and discover the singer is seemingly meant to be a sea captain fighting a losing battle against stormy seas. I got none of that from the way those words are sung, and while I wouldn\u2019t argue that the singing is bad by any stretch, I would say the performance lacks the gravitas that the rest of the band and production are aiming for, and the effects layered on that performance further remove it from where I\u2019d want it to be. On slower, calmer songs, this is much less of an issue. \u201cSlow Winds,\u201d for example, effectively captures a feeling of uneasiness that benefits from a straightforward vocal performance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Transience is only forty-three minutes long, but I feel there isn\u2019t enough variety from song to song for it to avoid feeling a touch overlong. This may be another offshoot of the vocal performance\u2014all of the hooks I can recall offhand are riffs\u2014or it may just be that Mirror of Deception play a fairly straightforward brand of doom metal, one that enjoys a bleak, if upbeat, atmosphere and doesn\u2019t focus so much on catchiness in any form. The result is an album that is generally enjoyable in the moment, but doesn\u2019t make a big enough impact for genuine memorability.<\/p>\n

On Transience, Mirror of Deception do a lot of good things and play a lot of good music. But I can\u2019t help feeling it doesn\u2019t quite come together as an album. I can see myself returning to individual songs more than Transience itself, and that\u2019s a shame. I can hear the experience of the players, feel the maturity of the group, but the music just isn\u2019t resonating like I know it should. The result, for me at least, is a mixed experience and a new band worth keeping an eye on.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.5\/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb\/s mp3
Label: Self release<\/a>
Websites: mirrorofdeception-doom.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/pages\/mirror-of-deception<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: March 27th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As much as metal is a niche interest (at least in my part of the world), it is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[20172,10968,64,63,10614,134,45771,259096,292651,136,228,229,20183,292652],"class_list":{"0":"post-600316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2-5","9":"tag-10968","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-doom-metal","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-german-metal","15":"tag-mar26","16":"tag-mirror-of-deception","17":"tag-music","18":"tag-review","19":"tag-reviews","20":"tag-self-release","21":"tag-transcience"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}