Gaerea // Mirage // Album Review

The Portuguese Anonymous Black Metallers have returned with their latest full-length album and the group who formed in 2016 is here to continue their rising profile whilst providing us with top-level music to enjoy along the way.

Having put in the hard yards in the underground, Gaerea released Limbo in 2020 and now the band are “eager to take on the world” continuing that the pandemic taught them that nothing is certain. Taking around two weeks to build the foundations for Mirage and using the experience to explore the emotions around isolation and suffering.

Basing the album around loneliness and the accompanying fears, the masked members allow the music to fully express their vulnerabilities and darkest fears without them being attributable to those people.

The 9-track album spans just over an hour and following the haunting intro to the title track, the quality of Black Metal just explodes. The combination of rawness and then the clarity of the music are two aspects that generally don’t go hand in hand in this genre. In the case of Gaerea that detail to the sounds heard helps to fully appreciate the full joys as the cascade of percussion really shakes your soul.

The vocals are a traditional sounding Black Metal and as the guitars slice and stab away in the dark, the music is relentless and savage. This quality doesn’t drop throughout the entire album and even when the sounds get more stripped back and steady pace, the captivating aura maintains its grasp on your throat.

The way that the music helps to add layers of aggression on top of the vocals is something that Gaerea clearly think through and ensure adds to the masterful composition and stunning record that you will learn to know as Mirage.

Any fan of Black Metal that’s not already all over Gaerea, you need to get onto this. This is the present and the future of Black Metal.

From start to finish Mirage is one of, if not the best album in the genre for 2022. Bearing in mind that a massive Black Metal band released an album last weekend, this will turn a few heads that are listening to that album. If you are anything like me, I won’t be comparing the two, just enjoying this Black Metal ride whilst admiring how a band that hasn’t been around for too long, are creating music that rivals some of the biggest bands around.

Ed Ford

Mirage will be released Friday 23^rd September 2022 via Season of Mist.