Mirrorthrone - Gangrene

Mirrorthrone is the product of a Swiss guy Vladimir who handles all the vocals, guitars, keyboards, and drum programming. The drum is very obviously a drum machine. Mirrorthrone is Vladimir's symphonic epic black metal project. I had actually heard of Mirrorthrone while researching what I thought was his extreme and raw black metal Eikenskaden, though digging around now, it seems as though Eikenskaden was done by a different guy... I already have the debut Of Wind And Weeping. I haven't really followed this band at all, and it looks like I missed the second album. Gangrene is the third and latest from this band. (I'm going to refer to it as a band, instead of writing out Vladimir's symphonic project.)

First of all, this album is definitely epic. The 6 tracks clock in at over an hour, with the longest being 15 minutes. However, the usual song structure isn't really here, the songs rarely reuse riffs and instead change and evolve throughout the duration. I think the highlight of this band is the vocals. Vladimir has a wide range of styles that he puts to good use in this band. Most of the songs break between his raw black metal voice and his clean chants. There's a vocal section on the debut album that I would just listen to over and over. There are not many bands where it is the vocals that actually attract me to the band, but this is one of them.

The drums are a weak point on the album. He really should get a real drummer, the drum machine just sounds thin and weak much of the time.

7/10