With three-quarters of the personnel of the popular Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice had to stand out to make their mark. While the band’s sound remains gloomy and beastly, it’s in a much slower, more crushing way than its cousin’s music. Sparagmos, the American band’s second album, brings back the cold sweats of the 1990s, when doom metal broke out of its blues roots to embrace death and darkness. And it’s a rather successful exercise. Beneath the tortured vocals, we hear a rhythm section that strongly marks the downbeats with low, rumbling chords of distortion. The other guitarist, meanwhile, indulges in slow, high-pitched melodies drowned in delay and reverb. If everything is in shades of darkness on Sparagmos, the arrangements are no less contrasted thanks to this mix of registers. The sludge coexists with frequent echoes of melancholy piercing above.
This atmosphere is amplified by a production that emphasizes the interplay of depths rather than the brilliance of the musical performances. The instrumental parts seem distant through the mass of sound. The long compositions allow each attack to resonate for a long time while the listener yields to the expanse. Although Sparagmos may sound like a pastiche of older bands such as Winter and Disembowelment, there’s no denying that there’s a place for such a niche in the contemporary extreme metal scene. Without reinventing the wheel, Spectral Voice have succeeded in creating an engaging album and popularizing a rather rare style.
