Mirror Reaper

This is the third album by the duo from Seattle, released as a double record by Profound Lore Records on 20 October 2017. The whole of it is one piece, "Mirror Reaper", and it runs to eighty-three minutes. Shortly before recording began, founding drummer Adrian Guerra left the band over his health and Jesse Shreibman took his place. Guerra died not long afterwards, and when the news reached the band the tone of the record changed. Their own announcement said that they had been devastated by the loss of their friend and former drummer during the writing, and that in love and respect for his memory they had reserved a brief but important section of the song for him, using unreleased vocal takes from the previous album. That movement works as the turning point of the piece, a place to reflect, and they said they believed he would have been proud of it. The cover is a painting called Essence of Freedom, commissioned from the Polish artist Mariusz Lewandowski, and it strongly recalls the work of Zdzislaw Beksinski, his own chief influence. The sleeve made Lewandowski widely known in extreme metal and his paintings have appeared on many records since. Performances of the piece were often accompanied by a narrative visual collage made by a Seattle artist.