(In the spring of this year the long-running German traditional doom band Mirror of Deception released a new album named Transience, and our Comrade Aleks reached out to the band to discuss it. That led to the following extensive and very interesting interview with guitarist Jochen Fopp. And yes, the music here is a well-earned exception to the “command” in our site’s name.)
Earlier this year traditional doom metal veterans Mirror of Deception from Göppingen, Germany, made one more statement with their sixth album, Transience. Having spent over 35 (!) years in the metal underground, the band seemed to pass the peak of its fame—which occurred in the mid-2000s, a time when the band’s members were not only releasing albums but also organizing the Doom Shall Rise festival, an event which was important for the genre establishment. Yet, as the years roll by, Mirror of Deception maintains both its reputation and its excellent creative form.
I love this band, but I didn’t expect to say this: Transience sounds not merely viable—it is a strong, authentic album with superb dramatic pacing. The group has channeled all its strengths into the new record; the rich, massive riffs are complemented by Michael Siffermann’s noble clean vocals and captivating, languid melodies. And incidentally, only Michael and guitarist Jochen Fopp remain from the original lineup.
Even early in their career, the band avoided affectation; their “exercises in sorrow” are executed with dignity and come across as natural and authentic. The forty-five-minute Transience comprises seven tracks—a choice that strikes me as a deliberate decision to avoid overwhelming the listener or repeating themselves. Transience offers the comforting familiarity of doom metal exactly as it should be, and we got in touch with Jochen in order to spread a word of Transience and clarify a few things about this album.
Hi Jochen! How are you? How did Mirror of Deception spend the summer of 2026?
We had a very hot (more than 35 °C) 2 1/2 hours show in mid-July in a little town called Weikersheim in the south of Germany. The booker wanted us exclusively that night, no other bands. So we had the opportunity to dig deep into our treasure chest and play some older and rarely performed songs. That was a lot of fun. Other bands like Eremit had the same opportunity before at the same venue. Each of us went on vacation at some point, only interrupted by occasional sweaty rehearals. Summer in full swing is usually not our most productive part of the year.
It sounds like you use autumn to draw some inspiration, do you? Do you feel a need to spur yourself on and start composing? Or do you just let it come naturally when the stars align?
I haven’t really thought about which seasons/ months are our most productive ones. When we’re not rehearsing for gigs we do jam a lot and things evolve naturally. You’ll never know when and where inspiration strikes. I usually don’t force it but let it happen.
Before we turn to your new album Transience, can you introduce Mirror of Deception’s new members? How did Pascal Schrade and Uwe Kurz appear in your ranks?
We have known Uwe for probably 30 years by now. We went to the same local metal bar and he was very active with his melodic death metal outfit Behind the Scenery and a couple of other related projects back in the day. So when we split with our former members Hans and Rainer he was the first and only drummer we asked. Uwe wasn’t actively playing in bands at the time. At first he was a bit nervous, because Mirror of Deception is in many aspects the almost polar opposite of what he was used to. In the beginning he often asked “Am I playing too fast?” or “Am I doing too much?”. We on the other hand were afraid he would get bored, even though we have never been about “singular snail pace only” and always had a bit of variation. We soon connected on a musical level, he found his way into this strange new world and discovered how rewarding it can be to play a bit more reduced instead of blasting full speed ahead. He is a very nice guy and a very skilled and versatile drummer. Since he joined us he has helped out various local bands who play different styles for a gig here and there.
For Pascal it was a smoother transition. He showed up at almost every Mirror of Deception gig for more the past 20 years prior to joining us and we played with his Doom duo Mustum and its predecessors various times. He is a guitarist originally but switched to bass for us and is a great singer, too. It’s a very inspiring and productive way of working together. Both Uwe and Pascal have a lot respect for the history of the band and it’s incredible what we have accomplished together since they have joined us.
Transience keeps the band’s essential spirit, yet it sounds updated and refreshing, like if you were able to review your own formulas and prove it somehow. Did Pascal and Uwe take part in the album’s composing? Or was it still the “old guard’s” job?
Thank you! They have both participated and contributed very actively and that’s exactly what we wanted. Pascal brought two songs, “Death, Deliver Us” and “Consumed”. Also the lyrics for “Haven” and assisted on some others. I came with instrumental demos for “Currents”, “Haven”, and “Slow Winds” and we fleshed out those songs together. The other tracks on the album, “The Sands” and “Meander” were created by the entire band.
Throughout all of our history it was never just the “old guards”. Sure, the core of the band, meaning Siffi and me on guitar has always been the same. We have our own way of playing and composing and Siffi has been the vocalist since 2003. So that is the red line that runs through and connects it all. But every song, demo, and album is the sum of the people involved and we are proud of everything we have done.
What was your mind set when you started recording the album? Did you set a deadline? Did you search for a specific sound and mood? And I guess that Mirror of Deception doesn’t tend to repeat itself much — you managed to develop the sound from album to album but in very balanced way, without forcing it. And you know, I appreciate this recognizability.
In the beginning there was only the plan to make our next album. We worked on 2-3 songs at a time and recorded them to get them out of our system. Uwe and Pascal had only been in the band for a couple of months when we recorded “Slow Winds”, “Currents”, and “Consumed”. Then we focused on the next songs until we had album length. Album length is defined by the optimal running time for a vinyl album (approx. 45 minutes) because we definitely wanted this, and some of our earlier albums were much too long for that. The writing and recording process took us almost exactly two years. Longer than originally expected but there was initially no deadline. It was worth it because the “home stretch” brought us “The Sands” and “Meander”. We didn’t have like 30 songs ready to pick from. We composed and recorded exactly what we needed and what we felt good with. The concept developed over time and all the puzzle pieces fell into place.
In the past we always wrote and prepared the entire album and then recorded all songs in a long session. We all have busy schedules these days and this way of doing it was much more relaxed and convenient. The instrumental recordings for 2-3 songs were made in an afternoon and for the vocal sessions we took separate extra time. We finally decided we want to get the album released in March 2026 when we had been booked for Easter Darkness festival in Gothenburg, Sweden and Doom in Bloom festival in Göppingen, Germany. Both took place in April 2026.
You recorded new songs with Michelle Darkness as the sound engineer again; did he contribute some ideas to your songs? How actively was he involved in this work? Didn’t you want to add his vocals to some of Mirror of Deception’s songs?
He works with the songs we bring to him. Occasionally he offers ideas for vocal lines when Siffi and Pascal reach a dead end. I usually stay away from vocals recordings and let the three of them do their thing and they always surprise me. Michelle has his small cameos when we record with him but we haven’t asked him to do lead vocals yet nor did he. He becomes the 5th member of the band when we enter his studio and he doesn’t tell us how many hours he actually puts into producing. Our band seems to be very dear to him and without him we wouldn’t sound the way we did on the last two albums.
Why did you decide to release the album in a DIY way? Is it just because of the small run of the album? Though I bet that you know everything about distribution and promotion after all these years.
We stumbled into DIY mode out of necessity at first. We’ve been on Cyclone Empire Records for our Shards (2006) and A Smouldering Fire (2010) albums and all was good. Around 2016/17 they quit the label business but are still active as a mail order company. We had our The Estuary album in the pipeline and an event coming up which was important to us: the Doom over Vienna festival 2018. We wanted to have our album ready to present and sell there. We had no time to knock on doors and find a new label, work out a deal, and wait around for a release date. I’m sure we would have found a good label and there actually were some offers at the time. But labels have their schedules and we have ours. We have come to enjoy the freedom to do what, when, and how we want to and also the direct contact to our supporters.
It works for us thanks to Bandcamp and how we operate as a band. Quite often there is just a single person having to take care of all the less fun things besides making music: promotion, booking, distribution, sending orders out, accounting, and so on. Some might enjoy that role, for others it can become overwhelming. That’s when a label can step in to help with some of that work.
Fortunately, we can share responsibilities among us. Additionally, we have the benefit of not having to pay recordings or the production of physical media and merchandise out of our own pockets anymore. The band has been self-sustaining for quite a while now. Underground bands hardly shift thousands of copies of physical media these days and we never did. We can handle the demand, have gained some experience, and we are happy with our own tiny label Estuarial Records. This has enabled us to offer Transience not only digitally, on CD and vinyl, but also on cassette and as a limited metal box, all realized with the help of a small network of skilled and gifted friends. I highly doubt that any label would have been willing or able to do the same for this album.
By the way, I never thought about that seriously, but what were the runs of your previous albums? Let’s say the bigger one and smaller one…
My estimate is there are between 50 up to 1500 copies of each of our releases out there, including early demos and EPs. Making some of them hard to track down. Shards and A Smouldering Fire had the most copies produced. But just recently we have sold the very final copies of our Foregone and A Smouldering Fire CDs.
Foregone? Do you mean the first and only run dated 2004? Something’s wrong here, it’s impossible! And A Smouldering Fire double-album, it’s 16 years old!
Yes, Foregone (released in 2004) sold out only recently and A Smouldering Fire (released in 2010), too. Don’t forget that physical media demand has dwindled significantly in the past 20 years. We play niche music which is only relevant for a very small global audience. We don’t play that many live shows either and mostly sell through Bandcamp. Further on, shipping internationally has become very expensive or almost impossible. There are hardly any shops in Germany that sell CDs anymore. Vinyl is a bit more popular but the local record shops take only 2-3 LPs at a time.
We grew up with physical media and for us and our generation it still holds some sentimental value. Personally, I want to listen to music offline. I want to hold something in my hands, study the artwork, lyrics, and spend time with it. So I buy CDs, LPs, and merchandise and also MP3s from bands directly. I don’t use streaming myself other than checking out new bands or releases on YouTube. But a lot of people use Spotify and other services so we want to be present there as well.
For a start, I supposed that “Death, Deliver Us” is a traditional eschatological scenario, yet you based it on the “Dracula” story. Did you watch the last cinema adaptations? What do you prefer – Nosferatu (2024) or Dracula (2025)? And there was The Last Voyage of The Demeter (2023) as well, nice, yet not a perfect addition to the original story.
I’ll hand this over to Pascal, because this song is his baby and I have only seen “The Last Voyage” which I didn’t find that convincing. But not the other movies yet.
Pascal: As with most book adaptions I have to say I still prefer the book to the movies. But the movies of course added to the myth so I appreciate them mostly. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” I found to be lacking sadly. However, I find this part of the “Dracula” story especially exciting, the crossing where people mysteriously disappear. Stoker describes the sea voyage with excerpts from the ship’s logs and newspaper articles. With my lyrics, I wanted to take on the perspective of the ship’s crew, kind of offering a new viewpoint. There are a few other songs by Mirror of Deception with nautical themes, so it fits the band well. The tragedy of the Demeter was also inspired by real-life events sharing some similarities with the Russian cargo ship Dmitry.
Some classic doom bands like Cathedral, Electric Wizard, or Reverend Bizarre and newer ones like… like Demon Lung if they’re active still… so they are or were influenced also by those old horror movies from ’70s – ’80s. Brides of Dracula, Alucarda, or whatever… Isn’t it your cup of tea? Honestly, I don’t see if such a movie would fit Mirror of Deception’s style.
No, we never went down that road. We aren’t the biggest cineasts to begin with and too many others have already done that with more expertise than we have. The exception is the song “Beltaine’s Joy” (released on a split single with Pagan Altar in 2011). It was written by our former bass player Andi as an homage to one of his favourite movies, The Wicker Man. Of course the 1973 original and not the 2006 abomination. Real life, books, and documentaries were usually more inspiring than movies to us.
As for our lyrical themes in general, a writer for the Hungarian Fémforgács webzine put it very well: “They stayed away from topics popular in this genre, like the occult, addictions, or even philosophical and theological questions, and instead focused on the everyday struggles of ordinary people in their music and their entire worldview.”
The precise description indeed! Jochen, I read that you took more of a nature documentary approach as a starting point this time around, and for example we can find it in the “Currents” lyrics, which describe the descending of waterflows from the mountains. What drew your attention to topics like this? Is it a new-found comfort of closing to a sort of inner harmony?
I was trying capture a mood and atmosphere rather than tell a straight story. Some of the wonders of nature can be powerful metaphors for underlying, more personal topics. To give some examples: the journey the water takes in “Currents” could be interpreted as the journey through life itself. The sandstorm in “The Sands” could be a devastating personal crisis. Those listeners who are willing to engage with the album are welcome to charge the lyrics with their own experiences and make their individual connections.
Who recorded the growling for “Haven”? By the way, there is a bunch of traditional doom bands in Germany and there is a company of well-established death-doom bands like Ahab, Ophis, and so on. Do you see this entire collection of bands as “the scene” nowadays? Do you feel a kind of comradeship with other bands?
That is actually one of Michelle’s cameos on the new album. We were quite surprised when he first presented it to us. Soon we thought it’s a cool idea and this is for sure something no one expected from us.
We have always had a great time meeting and playing shows with Ahab, Ophis, Calliophis, and internationally speaking with Officium Triste and Mourning Beloveth. The closer friendships and tighter bonds are with more local bands like Dawn of Winter, Naevus, Doomshine, and also Dreaming. We are all part of the Doom family and try to achieve similar things in different ways. However I wouldn’t say we have followed each other very closely, nor are we in regular contact.
The “Meander” song has a very specific topic, and you drew it from another documentary. How did you work on its lyrics? And did you approach historical topics before?
Yes, we did. “Der Student von Ulm” was inspired by a local medieval legend about love, hate, betrayal, madness, and death. Based on a true story.
“Meander” however has a different approach and reaches back to a much earlier point in time. The Bronze Age, approximately 1250 BC, in Northern Germany. It was inspired by a Dan Davis documentary about the “Battle of the Tollense valley”. It is linked in the description for the “Meander” video we have released recently. There is a lot more content (of varying quality and lots of AI garbage, too) about this topic on YouTube. The lyrics first zoom in on a little river in present times and later the horrors beneath the soil get unearthed. The sober truth of what humans are capable of doing to each other and have been doing for a very long time.
Scientists still don’t have the full picture of what actually happened in the Tollense valley. It’s a mystery and much of it is still speculation. The population density more than 3000 years ago in middle and Northern Europe was pretty low. As far as it is known there were small villages and settlings, but no cities. How didit happen that presumably thousands of people gathered in this particular spot and killed each other in such a brutal manner? Was it “Europe’s first battle”? Over what? Was it something like an annual market or gathering or a large trade caravan that got attacked? The genetic research of the bones revealed that people came from many different and distant locations. How did they all know when and how to get to this place?
I have always had a fascination for prehistory and anything before gunpowder and knights. As well as for different cultures from all around the globe. Ancient people were in no way simple or primitive. On the contrary, I see an alarming decline in education, manners, attention, intelligence, culture, and developments in the age of smartphones. What they surely had were different approaches, beliefs, and solutions for different challenges. And much harder and shorter lives than we can imagine today.
In my early teens I devoured my Erich von Däniken books but I don’t believe people back then needed any extraterrestrial assistance to create and build what they did. For those not familiar with this author from Switzerland: he promoted the idea that visitors from out of space were responsible for many of mankind’s early accomplishments. From the late 1960s on he sold millions of books with his entertaining but wild and pseudo-scientific claims.
Oh, I remember that I was interested in things like this when I was younger and had free time. Yes, I consumed stuff like that in the ’90s and a bit earlier as well. Paleocontact, etc. I suppose that due to the lack of information we had more trust in such theories, but nowadays maybe critical thinking prevails, although seeing things which happen around the world… How are you optimistic towards the future? Do you feel that there will be time for Mirror of Deception to continue further?
Yes, Paleo contact, pre-astronautics – or whatever you call it. Mr. von Däniken was actually convicted for fraud, wrote one of his books in prison and made a business model out of it. Archaeologists and other scientists were furious at him but in hindsight it seems rather innocent. Today’s lies, propaganda, and conspiracies are a lot more dangerous, harmful, vile, and cost thousands of lives. The world looks bleak these days, worse and more threatening than any other period I remember in my lifetime. But you can’t give up and only live in fear. Everyone`s time on Earth is limited. So do the best you can while you still can. I know that we will continue as long as we feel we still have something to express. And that is the meaning behind our album title “Transience”.
Recently you made a digital release of The Early Years (1993 – 1997) compilation, and as I understand you didn’t plan to release it physically. So what are your plans towards this release now?
Around 2000 we offered a CD-R called Past & Present for a while. It included much of the same old demo material. At some point we had the idea to do a re-issue on a single CD with a proper booklet, liner notes, old photos, and all that. Hence the duration of 78 minutes for The Early Years. So we gave these songs to Michelle to try to remaster everything as good as possible given the varying sound quality of the source material. We were not sure what the demand would be like and sat with it for some time. In particular one guy from Sweden, Mr. “Solstrykare” kept asking for it. Finally we decided to release it in digital format via Bandcamp for the few who would care. Still no plans for a physical release.
Solstrykare, ha-ha. I know, I know. I guess that if he would put in enough efforts, he even forced Dreaming to release their third album. However, what’s about the feedback? How much do you have nowadays? Do people write you directly or share their opinion some other way?
He can be very persistent for sure. But we all owe him a lot for that. We still get feedback but the times of handwritten multiple-page letters are long gone. Everyone is more busy and distracted these days. We get feedback via our social media channels, Bandcamp, YouTube, and sometimes directly by email. But we don’t know much about what people share about us in forums or other channels.
And what are your plans for the rest of 2026?
We are looking forward to playing a few more shows all over Germany until the end of the year. By November we will release a split-7” with Mortajas from Chile. There are already some plans for 2027 but it’s still too early to reveal.
Mortajas? A proper company! How many new songs do you have for this split?
Indeed, a great band! It is one song by each band. Mortajas recorded a Reino Ermitaño cover and we have “Slow Winds”, a song from our current album but in a different version, entited “Vientos Lentos”. The very first time you will hear us sing in Spanish.
Why? Well, I had the initial idea for this song while I was visiting my wife Constanza in the south of Chile. It became the very first new song we released as a sign of life almost 2 years prior to the Transience album and it became the heart, soul, and starting point for it. I thought it deserved a little bit more so I thought about a Spanish version to honour my personal connection with Chile. I am pretty fluent by now but of course no native speaker.
When we played the Doom over Vienna festival in 2024, the Instagram channel Doomforschung wrote about us and the song “Slow Winds” in particular. It turns out that the person behind it is Pablo Rojas Sahurie, a Chilean musicologist at the University of Vienna. He holds an official research assignment on the subject of doom metal. He publishes scientific papers and gives lectures. More about him and his work at https://rojassahurie.com/home/. He became a friend and I asked him if he would be interested in a collaboration and help us with translating the lyrics. He agreed immediately and did an incredible job. Then the question arose who would sing it. Siffi said he would give it a shot and did very well.
It’s usually me who comes up with the crazy ideas and the other guys have to help to put them into action. My bandmates are used to that by now and most of the time I can convince them, Then I approached our doom brothers Mortajas to see if they would be interested in doing a split single with us, they agreed, and that’s where we are. As mentioned it should be out in November 2026.
Thanks for the interview Jochen! It was a pleasure to talk again, and I hope that we’ll have a few more reasons to talk in the future.
The pleasure was all mine, Comrade Aleks. Thank you very much for your ongoing support and for the great questions. I am looking forward to our future conversations!
https://mirrorofdeception-doom.bandcamp.com/