Ataraxy – The Last Mirror
Release Date: 17th June 2022
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo / Dark Descent
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Doom Metal.
FFO: Asphyx, Krypts, Early Amorphis, Hooded Menace, Worm.
Review By: Rick Farley
Spain’s doomy death dwellers, Ataraxy, are set to unleash their latest punishing inferno of mournful death metal. The Last Mirror marks the bands third full length and feels like a natural progression from their previous efforts, by adding some gloomy atmosphere to their classic influenced death metal savagery. Firmly planted in the underground with a small but loyal fanbase, it’s dumbfounding to me that this band is not better known. A surge in the genre’s popularity in recent years and an abundance of high-quality death/doom albums could bring a lot more eyes to the band’s latest release. Let’s hope that to be the case.
The Last Mirror is a colossus of airy atmospheric doom and buzz saw style old school death metal. The music is immense and brutal, but still audibly entrancing. There’s a level of comforting droning that hooks you in and keeps you mesmerized before slicing your throat with a rough-edged blade. This is the music equivalent of being paralyzed by a beguiling spirit that creepily nurtures you towards your own desolation. Waking up and seeing something standing over you ready to guide you to demolishment. The serrated riffs hit savagely hard and are often mid-paced to faster death metal sections of pure devastation, but it’s the churning slow tempo walls of distorted wickedness that really set this record off. The austere, entrancing melodies bring you in and transport you on a gloriously painful journey throughout the entire album. Visceral, looming, and merciless. Check, check, and check.
The nine-minute opus, The Bell that Constantly Sounds, is the song the epitomizes the bands overall sound. Slow slithering to start off, crushing distorted chords in unison with clean picked guitar melodies overtop. Highly atmospheric, heavy, and melancholic. Tempos change between measured and crushing to blisteringly fast and brutish. The drums playing a huge part in leading the way with natural transitions, but also punishing with powerful grooves and hard-hitting stick and pedal violence. The jagged edged guitars churning between headbang-able chugging death metal and crawling doom. Hulking bass mimics the guitars, keeping the monstrous sounds below the murky depths. Melodies contort from sombrely playful to hellish and vile. The inventive whammy bar use towards the end of the song, gives off a running chainsaw sound mixed amongst the ringing bell and massive sounding chord structure that’s boatloads of unsettling. Engrossing dread is created throughout with layers, utilizing synths as contrast between moods and dynamic tempo changes. The vocals sound pained and utterly tormented. Equally harsh in contrast with the dynamics of the song, they bring another level to the already grim soundscape. The best comparison I can give is a throatier Adam Darski. Just a little more bellowing and less raspy, but equally agonized. Haunting, bludgeoning, and unnerving. Check, check, and check.
For a record that’s only seven tracks and forty-one minutes long, The Last Mirror will leave a dark, enduring impression. High quality song writing and immersive ambience. Grand in scale, jolting brutality that’s not disorienting but rather disgusting fits of violence that are only enhanced deeper by layered sombre beauty. The ongoing aura of a spectral, menacing entity begs to be consumed from start to finish as if a dreadful and horrifying story is being told. The record has incredible flow and an aware sense of its bestial self. Living and breathing through layers, textures, and moods. From deceptive bliss to tortured brutality, Ataraxy has upped the scale of creative doomy death metal. 
(4.5 / 5)
