Mirror of Deception - Shards Review

Rating: 9.6

Country: USA

Release Date: 2005

Track list:
1. Eulogy
2. The Unseen
3. A Wayfarer’s Tale
4. If They Would Cut My Throat Out…
5. Misgivings
6. Soul Rot
7. Not What It Seems
8. Penance

Penance - The Road Revisited

Brian Lawrence- Guitar/Vocals
Terry Weston- Lead Guitar
Rich Freund- Bass
Mike Smail- Drums

This was a stone cold classic when it was first released on Lee Dorrian's Rise Above imprint as The Road Less Travelled, and it remains a fucking classic now, arguably the finest hour from one of doom's most overlooked magi. Of course, this is very much removed from the dreamy, weightless soporifia that they would later craft with Alpha & Omega and SpiritualNatural, (A&O being my second favorite Penance recording to date), though this makes PERFECT sense when one considers that Brian Lawrence, Terry Weston and Mike Smail all served time in the slightly-more-awesome Dream Death, aka the finest Celtic Frost-inspired sludge band in the history of the universe (that includes Winter!). As such, there are a number of tracks on this that featured on the final Dream Death demo, specifically the AWESOME “The Unseen” and “A Wayfarer's Tale”, both crafted shortly after the unleashing of Dream Death's monumental Journey Into Mystery opus.

As such, this is very much a legitimate Dream Death album, and the differences are as minute as comparing Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return. Of course, certain riffs exhibit somewhat more invention and churning semi-melodic flourish than the “Dethroned Emperor” flavored chug of many Dream Death masterpieces (particularly the entwining, labyrinthine guitar figure that drives foreboding instrumental “If They Would Cut My Throat Out…”), but the dissimilarities are largely insubstantial. This album is very much the next logical evolution of the Dream Death legend, just as Celtic Frost were the next logical step in the Hellhammer legacy. The spectre of Fischer, St Mark and Ain are still very much looming in the background here, but one certainly gets the sense that Penance are developing a very distinct personality of their own here- the unbearably haunting clean intro of “A Wayfarer's Tale” is indicative of their growing sense of dynamics, “If They Would Cut My Throat Out” flaunts a distinctively intricate, disorienting sense of riffcraft that is absolutely on par with The Obsessed in execution, a technique that Penance would continue to employ on subsequent albums, “Misgivings” is unnerving minor chord doom at its absolute finest, dripping with malice and scorn, “Not What It Seems” and “Penance” are trudging, treacle-thick, NIHILISTIC sludgecore, contemporaneous with the first Eyehategod and many, many times better (a tall order, considering Eyehategod were quite awesome!).

There really isn't a whole lot more to say about this record- if you knew and loved Dream Death, chances are you probably own this in its original incarnation (I have no idea where I put mine, so I can't really identify the differences that exist between that release and this, the original mix derived from the masters). If you don't, but own Dream Death's prior material, you already have a lucid idea of what this Penance masterpiece sounds like, and what the general agenda is. Bilious, vile, utterly despotic and oppressively bleak SLUDGE metal that amalgamates the very finest elements of first album Celtic Frost, Winter, The Obsessed and Dream Death into a lumbering, bloodthirsty behemoth. This is the sound of vultures picking at your flesh as you lay outstretched under an unforgiving sun. Mandatory for all doom maniacs.

February 27th, 2006