Review MORTUARY DRAPE ‘Black Mirror’

Italian metal outfit Mortuary Drape are a band that’s already quite a while in business. Founded in 1986, the band released a few longplayers although the amount of new material was quite little during the last years.

The band released with ‘Wisdom – Vibration – Repent’ an EP in 2022 but it took the guys nine years to come up with a new studio album. ‘Black Mirror’ ends this rather long waiting time and offers eleven new songs.

The long awaited new full-length album and its songs is positioned somewhere between traditional-, black and death metal. It is a very gloom album with an occult and blasphemic character, reminding partly of Mercyful Fate.

The start into the album is a calm and sinister one. ‘Restless Death’ is the title of the opener, and it starts mystic before turning into diabolic metal track. Compared to some other bands Mortuary Drape offer a wider range of metal that includes the galloping ‘Into the Oblivion’. In addition, the band has woven in smartly some breaks which contributes to the entertaining factor of ‘Black Mirror’. But even with having all this in mind the album misses the wow moment and after a while there is a certain temptation to put the finger on the ‘skip’-button as the main principle of their songs structure returns too often. Although spiced up with some nice twists, none of the songs really sticks out and what worked on the latest EP becomes a bit too much on the full-length album.

What contributes positively to album and songs is the well-done production. ‘Black Mirror’ sounds powerful and nuanced, which is recognizable in the calmer parts, like on ‘Fading Flowers Spell’, as well as when tempo increases.

To conclude: ‘Black Mirror’ is an album that showcases the return of a legendary band and although the album comes with some good songs and blasting moments it’s a bit too much of the same just different.