KORPSE — Mirror Distance (review)

KORPSE — Mirror Distance album cover Boxset / Compilation · 2005 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Mirror Distance" is a compilation album by Scottish, Aberdeen based death metal act Korpse. The compilation was released through Aphelion Productions in December 2005. The band existed from 1990 to 1997 and released two full-length studio albums in that period. "Mirror Distance" is not a "best of" compilation of tracks from the two Korpse studio albums, but a "rarities" type compilation featuring demo material, studio outtakes and single tracks. So if you have in your possession "Mirror Distance" and the band´s two full-lengths, you have everything the band ever released. Quite a few of the tracks made it onto the studio albums, but here they are presented in their original raw form.

Korpse play a pretty odd type of death metal/deathgrind (a feeling that is further enhanced by song titles like "Octochoosy", "To be Continued", and "Vitamin F"), which features elements from both death, grind, sludge, psychadelic rock, and death´n´roll. Something that wasn´t necessarily the order of the day back when these tracks were recorded. The stylistic mish mash doesn´t always work well but when the band strike the right balance between the musical styles, you can hear there is potential somewhere within the often messy compositions and raw productions. Comparisons to early Disharmonic Orchestra and Pungent Stench aren´t completely wrong. Korpse are a trio and there is a raw and unpolished organic quality to their playing, which is often the case with trios and one of the charming things about them. There is simply more freedom, when there isn´t a second guitarist or keyboard player who has to fit in or a vocalist who solely does vocals in the band.

As the material on the 18 track, 74:45 minutes long compilation are taken from various releases, the sound quality differ throughout the release, but even though most of tracks come from demo releases, the production values are actually of a pretty good quality. It´s raw and sometimes sligthly murky, but the unpolished sound work well with the equally unpolished and raw sounding material. After initial doubts about what this was all about, "Mirror Distance" is a release that has grown on me and I find it a pretty good compilation/rarities album and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
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