Album Review: Spectral Wound - Songs Of Blood and Mire
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I think off the top of my head, my favourite black metal band is probably French misanthropy merchant Mutiilation. As to why, well, It’s a combination of factors, but three aspects of Mutiilation's sound immediately leap to the fore whenever I find myself of a mind to examine my tastes: aggression, catchiness, and rawness. Aggression? Self explanatory really, but I like my tracks envenomed. Catchiness? as much as a certain breed of po-faced joyless cave dweller of the black metal random might attempt to argue otherwise, plenty of truly elite black metal is buried beneath earworms. Transylvanian Hunger? Freezing Moon? Jesus Tod? Hear those once and you’d be able to hum them on your deathbed. And rawness? The presentation of material is often as important as the material itself; given the option I will always prefer black metal with a rougher, feral production to it. Mutiilation excel on those three parameters; and while there are plenty of black metal releases I enjoy that don’t hit all of those markers, if you can at list clip all three with reasonable frequency then I’m pretty much guaranteed to enjoy whatever it is that I’m listening to. So. That being said, how do Spectral wound stack up?
Aggression: If we're not quite at, say, Revenge levels of unhinged bellicosity the canines are nonetheless bared plenty often, especially when the sickening hellhammer stomp hits on tracks like “less and less human, o savage spirit” or the gurn-inducing e-string abuse of “fevers and suffering”. Dirty uppercuts to the sternum, ribs popping free of their cartilage moorings. It takes no prisoners, sliding smooth as silk between outrageous blast marathons to the aforementioned death march grooves. Black metal is seldom regarded as exceptionally technical music, but the sheer stop-on-dime precision of the rhythm section permits no reproach, and allows Spectral Wound a laser-guided focus with which to deploy punishment.
Catchiness: More hooks than a DIY abortion clinic. There’s no other way to phrase it, this album is thick with bombastic, regal melodies that will carve their way into your long term memory like a traumatic event. Consider the latter half or so of “aristocratic suicidal black metal” for example; it’s a superlative cresendo of mournful yet righteous melody delivered over a martial, imperative drum beat, and from the first I knew it to have bored into my subconscious. Or “a coin upon the tongue”, when that isolated bass and off-beat tom hits herald a floor-to-ceiling command to headbang that crashes through the speakers with murderous intent.
Rawness: I think it’s worth noting that “Raw” production and “Bad” production are not synonymous. Take Sodom’s seminal “In the sign of evil” EP for example. Raw? Objectively so. Yet instruments are all still readily audible and distinguishable from each other. Same thing goes for “Welcome to hell” by Venom for another example of the point being made. Spectral voice aren’t as rough as those two, let alone the jagged kvlt nirvana of Sanguine Relic, Orgy of Carrion, or any other band in the Raw black subgenre, yet I can’t imagine any but the most frostbitten of raccoon faced black metal devotees taking issue with it either. It’s heavy as hell, the bass punching inexorably through the mix with deep, burly drums heaving the guitars at you. There’s an abrasive grind to the guitar tones that never buries the lead work – including some very welcome solos - in fuzz yet nonetheless comes ready and willing to sand your epidermal layer to dust, and the suitably cavernous selection of shrieks, screams and howls comes gorgeously slathered in reverb, as though you’re being yelled at within some sepulchral, mist-woven valley.
So as can be seen, Spectral wound meet my three criteria as laid out initially rather well. But hold; nothing is perfect – what, then, can be said to the album’s demerit? Not a great deal to be honest. I couldn’t list anything that I actively disliked. If there’s an argument to be made that the album is a touch conservative in its approach, wedded too closely to the established tenets of first and second wave black metal, then however begrudgingly, I would have to mumble a surly “aye”. Yet the counterpoint would just be to listen to the thing. Laid down for your listening pleasure are seven sulphurous hymns, bleak, solemn, yet rapturous – written and performed with both technical flair and a clear reverence for the music. If you enjoy black metal I would entreat you to give this a go. There is a reason – a good one, as this album aptly demonstrates – why Spectral Wound are modern day genre heavyweights.
