GAEREA – Mirage
Release Date: 23rd September 2022
Label: Season of Mist
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Post Black Metal.
FFO: Uada, Behemoth, Mgla.
Review By: Andy Spoon
One of the things that makes Portuguese black metal outfit GAEREA one of the best acts in the extreme metal world right now is the fact that they have so-perfectly blended the aesthetic with the sonic world, creating an image that conveys their message as well as the musical elements. Instead of going the corpse paint and lo-fi black metal route, GAEREA uses concepts of dark, featureless musicians playing highly-polished, heavily-technical metal that mixes visual and audio art at a visceral level, calling the audience to have an experience that reaches down into the heart of extreme art forms like heavy metal, something which brought us all into the fold of the church of the extreme
GAEREA’s 2022 release, Mirage, is a much-anticipated follow-up to 2020’s critically-acclaimed album, Limbo, which was my personal AOTY for 2020. Naturally, I think that there would be an extreme amount of bias if I were to try and review this album, but perhaps I might be the best person to have a look into what I believed might be the case, and compare it to what the objective truth is. In essence, I need to have a realistic conversation with myself about whether my feelings about Limbo would affect how I perceive their next work. After all, there’s nothing in the heavy metal fandom that is worse than a shill. As a result, I promise to be objective and cruel, if necessary to weigh Mirage against not only Limbo, but everything else that has been released in 2022 thus far.
One of GAEREA’s main attributes which makes audiences appreciate their work is the high-level of production value in the recordings. The drums, guitars, and vocals are expertly-polished, allowing the listener to appreciate some of the dynamic changes that are present, from soft and slow interludes with whispered lyrics, to an impressive “wall of sound” at certain moments to emphasize the intensity of emotion conveyed in the specific part of the track. Bouncing back and forth between movements in songs is something that is absolutely essential to the overall “sound” of GAEREA, so it’s something that sonically is cared for in production, and frankly, is done expertly, as Mirage has absolutely stunning audio quality.
Part of the mystique of GAEREA is that their songs all have powerful themes, both lyrically and musically. The tone emphasized is a blend of intensity, extremity, and frustration with the universe, “god” or futility. Naturally, it would be difficult to try and put the conveyed tone “into a box”. However, Mirage tends to do just that, utilizing some of the best devices in the black metal arsenal at what seems to be just the right times. Specifically, the sharp, dissonant, two-chord tones over wailing blast beats that make the listener think of off-the-shelf black metal.
One of the things that makes GEAREA so unique is their ability to create long, flowing, moody tracks with several movements that enhance, not just extend, the progression of each track. It cannot be described as a fast-slow transition between sections. There are sometimes as many as a half-dozen different parts to each track, deviating sharply from the “Intro-verse-chorus-outro” structure which can become pervasively predictable in a good deal of extreme metal music. Instead, we are treated to 8 or 9 minute long tracks like Deluge, which have flows on flows, subplots, main themes, and variations on themes.
Mirage has an intensity of emotion in every last track that is conveyed powerfully through the post-blackened, haunting guitar melodies and the harsh and “desperate” vocals, which sound like they come from the wrong genre. There is no artificial harshness to the vocal delivery. It’s all extremely raw and human in so many ways. I had always been told that good black metal vocals ought to sound like a Nazghul from Lord of the Rings, and that good Death metal vocals are like Cookie Monster. GAEREA is finding a way to perfectly blend their post-black sound with a vocal that sounds more like an angsty hardcore band might. Yet, it just flows perfectly.
You’ll find that when the themes are existential dread, sorrow over death, feeling lost in an abyss of existence, and other angsty topics, the realness of the vocal and lyrical delivery is the icing on the proverbial cake. Some of my favorite vocal variations are in Ebb and Salve, showing the growing abilities of the vocal section after Limbo’s which seemed to have a different tone across the album. Mirage is notably different from Limbo in the sense that the longest track is nine minutes long, compared to Limbo’s longest tracks at around 11:00 minutes. Frankly, I loved the outrageously-long tracks that felt like 3 songs in one. That delivery is not as frequently-used on Limbo, but can be clearly seen on Arson and Mirage, movements and interludes pacing the pieces of the performance together without breaking track numbers. It’s one of the things that this band clearly does best.
Being overly-critical of some elements on the album, I would probably have liked to have heard some longer interludes for tracks to create more of the “mood” that builds on the heavy themes. The album tends to portray a dimension of intensity that might be expressed better with additional variation here and there. However, that’s probably a drop in the bucket of things one could say about an album which features as much variation at its core as Mirage does.
The album features 8 tracks with a 9th “bonus” track, which I interpret to mean that the band, itself, does not consider it to be a good fit with the rest of the songs, and is a backdoor way to trying to tell the listener to consider it on its own, something that I employed, personally, as I have been in bands who did the exact same thing. Sometimes, members look at each other and say “I have no clue how this song fits anywhere” and then call it a bonus track. This track, Laude, is more reminiscent of tracks from Limbo, making it superb, but still not in-theme with the work presently-offered. I’m glad they added it, though, as it was definitely good enough to avoid being relegated to an interim EP.
It’s clear to me that Mirage is good, if not great. I think that I am absolutely going to consider this as being one of my top 5 albums of the year for no reason other than the fact that I can listen to it for hours and hours trying to break apart the themes and musical movements. Mirage differs from Limbo verily in the sense that every last fucking track on this album is extremely-solid. It’s a ride from start to finish, every track expertly-polished and honed to emotive perfection.
I think that listeners could put any track from Mirage on a playlist, treat it like a single, show it to their friends, and give a perfect example of who and what GAEREA is. There aren’t any parts of the album (as intended) that are out of character with the band’s obvious theme and tone. There is remarkable continuity without getting repetitive at all. This is exactly what made Limbo so great in 2020. I think that there is strong evidence that Mirage might be one of the better releases in all metal for 2022. It’s safe to say that it’s a dynamite follow-up to my 2020 AOTY and lacks very little in the way of musicality or substance.
(4 / 5)
