Label - Dark Descent Records
Release Date - 9th Feb 2024
Words - Tony Bliss
Spectral Voice aren’t the sort of band to do things in a hurry, but they aren’t the sort to do things by halves either. And so whilst Sparagmos may arrive almost a full seven years after their debut full length ‘Eroded Corridors Of Unbeing’ (but hey, they have released a few split EP’s in that time, and they share three-fourths of their membership with Blood Incantation and countless other projects - they're obviously pretty busy dudes), these four tracks, in the truest death-doom tradition, represent forty minutes of long-form, abyss-conjuring extremity that certainly wasn’t thrown together overnight. That being said, with a dusting of mixing board magic from producer de rigueur Arthur Rizk and four musicians on revelatory form, this ain’t just good - we’ve got something pretty special on our hands here.
Like some beastly union between the grotesque power of Incantation and the peerless dirge of monstrous Aussie's disEMBOWELMENT, Sparagmos still revels in all things desolate and destructive, double-dunked in Lovecraftian dread and the sort of tooth-rattling bludgeon that all fans of classic slow-motion death will be familiar with. However, as opener ‘Be Cadaver’ will attest to, Spectral Voice has tapped into something with these songs - something even more legitimately of the other that makes that glacial pace and the experimental horror atmospherics all the more terrifying right out of the gate, avowedly dark and intrinsically malevolent as ever yet imbued with an extra shot of soul-wrenching weirdness.
It’s not all as high-minded as it might sound although - for all the records artistry and immersive, funereal drifting, there's more than enough heads-down ripping to satisfy the band's more primitive urges, and each track contains at least one riff custom-built to summon death metal faces from the listener. Just check out ‘Red Feasts Condensed Into One’, which erupts like some multi-tentacled monstrosity bursting through the fissures before devolving into a cavernous wormhole, and ‘Sinew Censer’, which steadily mutates into a blast-ridden filth-fest (special mention must go to vocalist/drummer Eli Wendler, who turns in a man of the match performance throughout with his sewer level gutturals and unhinged shrieking).
And therein lies the true essence of Sparagmos. Dense and demanding, but never monotonous, its otherworldly potency remains an endlessly fascinating foreground presence without the band ever forgetting their scabby death-doom heart still pumping riff fuelled hate-sludge through the limbs of these songs. Top that off with a pitch-perfect production job, and this suffocating colossus is undoubtedly the first essential extreme metal record of the year - listen with curtains drawn, and step into the void.
9/10
Comments