This is the third album from Spanish death metallers Ataraxy.
This is the follow up to 2018’s Where All Hope Ends, and contains 44 minutes of new material.
Ataraxy play death metal that’s dark and malevolent. The well-written songs have a doom influence that seeps through the running time like a corrupting plague, bringing despair to everything it touches. Using this as their starting point, the band focus their attentions on crafting bleak, horror-filled atmospheres that range from terrifying with macabre mood to crushing with brutal intensity. Sinister atmosphere is an important part of Ataraxy’s music, and on The Last Mirror they lean into this heavily. Whether it’s unsettling melodies or creepy synths, Ataraxy know how to build grim feeling.
Each song is swamped in dread and misery, but tempered by the fact that this is ultimately a death metal album, not a pure doom one. As such, the band channel these dark emotions into songs that crush with nightmare potency, unleashing old-school riffs and raw deranged growls. Blast beats appear as violent cathartic explosions, ramming the eerie moods through the listener’s skull before they know what’s going on.
Ataraxy have crafted an album that’s swathed in doom darkness and funeral atmosphere. The Last Mirror is effective and well-realised, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who has a taste for the darker, moodier side of death metal.
Wonderbox Metal 