Spectral Voice is a good reason why sub-genres are becoming increasingly meaningless in metal. Over the course of a full-length and a number of splits the Denver-based band has smudged the edges of death metal, funeral doom, and black metal into a miasma of woe and anguish that gets its point across without having to resort to PR pablum like new album Sparagmos being “the culmination of a period devoted to katabatic immersion into the material.” Katabatic? Let me break it down for you in a way that doesn’t have you reaching to right-click and look up words: this is a sprawling mass of anger and pain; music as a death rattle for the soul. If there’s a light at the end, believe me Spectral Voice have swallowed it and burned its ember to ash. It’s dark and monumentally heavy, whether it’s blasting into black metal territory or rotting away with the lingering flesh of death metal’s corpse.

It’s a hell of a lot to take in, and while I could appreciate the riffing and intent on 2017’s Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, the production washed a lot of the nuance from the tracks. Yeah, we can argue whether nuance is even a thing for this kind of music, but one listen to Arthur Rizk’s production on Sparagmos should quell any debate. Most notably E. Wendler’s drums are way more prominent, bringing a lot more energy to the songs, particular when they crush like they do on the 13-minute “Red Feasts Condensed Into One” – the dynamics and tempo shifts here are magnificent, and would have been lost without the drums anchoring the chaos. That’s probably the biggest upgrade: when things get fast you can still track everything happening instead of it turning into a blanket of muffled rage. And when it does get downright funeral, all of the sonics are intact, giving every harmonized guitar and ghoulish utterance enough space to slosh over you like the spilt innards of humanity.

Lest you think the sonic upgrade sacrifices any rawness or “trvth” a quick (relatively speaking at seven and a half minutes) to “Sinew Censer” should immediately disabuse you of that notion. The shortest track on Sparagmos, it works to encapsulate everything about the band, from the whiplash changes in tempo to the ungodly stomach churning harmonizations between M. Kolontyrsky and P. Reidl on guitars. If I’m going to listen to this kind of chaos, make it truly queasy…and every track does that, from the chiming opening moments of “Be Cadaver” to the losing ambience of the epic “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity”. 

If I have any complaints, it’s that the majority of the album sticks to that formula in a way that it’s really hard to highlight specific moments. The three “main” tracks (and I’m using “main” here to denote the 10-minute plus epics) all ebb and flow from moments of utter despair to, well…moments of utter despair. Sure, “Be Cadaver” spends its first quarter evoking some chilling atmosphere thanks to Wendler’s frankly demonic vocals, and I love how his drums try to move the tempo forward in sporadic moments only to be pushed back by the glacial guitars. ”Red Feasts…” goes the opposite route, blasting forth in a torrent before settling into its funereal darkness, punctuated by some great black metal sections. ”Death’s Knell…” has perhaps the most death metal foundation, but when you’re talking 11, 12, and 13 minutes tracks I’ll admit that things can’t help but ebb and flow into one continuous lament.

But to be fair that’s also probably a feature rather than a bug for many who love to dwell in the depths Spectral Voice can consistently plumb, and there are moments throughout Sparagmos that are truly haunting. If that’s your bag then I have good news for you: this album is going to blow you away. And if it’s not, I would offer that no one else is quite hitting these notes like Spectral Voice are, and would invite you to step into the black and discover for yourself.¹

-Chris

¹ I don’t know if this is the first review to NOT mention Spectral Voice is made of up members from a very popular death metal band, but I also don’t know if it’s not NOT the first review…anyway the album’s good, so who cares, right? Check this shit out. 

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Sparagmos is available February 9th from Dark Descent Records. For more information on Spectral Voice, check out their Facebook page.