Neither boring or ever easily understood, Bell Witch have established themselves in the genre of funeral doom with alluring minimalist conceptual offerings backed by Profound Lore Records.
Just a year ago, Bell Witch’s previous drummer Adrian Guerra passed away at the age of 36, not long after releasing the band released their 2015 crusher Four Phantoms. In that regard, Mirror Reaper may pass as a eulogy or tribute while succeeding the seminal doom unit’s first two chapters, also.
Mirror Reaper is a dynamic single-track opus that stretches out the depths of funeral doom metal into a melodramatic two-part dirge.
If you’re really trying to capture the feel of this album, then it’s probably not going to come through to you on the first listen. It’s not an easy album to just throw in and jam out to. In fact, it immediately struck me as too listless and unforgivably monotonous, but that’s just the funeral doom metal way.
I had not heard Bell Witch until this promo passed my way, so I went back to Longing (2012) after finishing the 83-minute monolith that Profound Lore is prepping for an October 20th release. In comparison to Longing, it’s certainly way matured, but an inspection of the subsequent album Four Phantoms (2015) is a more relative album for judgment. I found that Mirror Reaper captivates a greater sense of melancholy and longing than Four Phantoms if that’s even possible.
As I sank into my second listen of Mirror Reaper, the album began to feel more listenable, however no less depleting. Around the thirty-minute mark on my second listen, the clamor of colossal heavy chords forced out a reverie buried beneath all of the morbid angst, and revealed a fountain of sincere poetry juxtaposed with rhythms that could only be the wild spawn of ravenous heartache.
The polish on Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper sets an ominous tone. As the track discloses their tortured panorama with execution that blossoms into beautiful cadences and that help Mirror Reaper to prevail over the senses.
The appeal of Mirror Reaper only grew on me after several sessions. Deep into the album’s second half, Dylan Desmond’s reverberating bass chords and Jesse Schreibman’s crushing drumming unravel a sonic work of art within two conflicting forces spilling upon a canvas of the infinite void.
Album release: October 20th 2017
