With possessed hands acting as the twisting teeth of saws, splitting the sinew by force of madness may very well be the only true release available away from the ache of attachment to one’s deep-rooted obsession with permanence and control. On their sophomore full-length album Denver, Colorado-based atmospheric death metal quartet Spectral Voice view life as assumed morbidity, an illness which can be harnessed into value or left alone to naturally funnel ones inert flesh from the feeder unto whimpering pine boxed finale. ‘Sparagmos‘ meditates upon each condition through a combination of irrational and instinctive traits explored, a slow-built and irregularly peaking set of four pieces which haunt and derange only the most willing ear for their dark ambient and funeral doom slaked death metal fusion of prior forms.

Formed circa 2012 between members/ex-members of various post-black metal projects Spectral Voice made a name for themselves in the mid-2010’s releasing a series of rehearsal tapes aimed at a wandering yet rousing type of death/doom metal with a clear ‘old school’ sensibility in mind before their first official demo tape (‘Necrotic Doom‘, 2015) released to widespread acclaim. Picked up for a reissue via Iron Bonehead before Dark Descent signed them on these folks were smart enough to begin touring right away, releasing rehearsal tapes and building interest for their inevitable debut. In the meantime most of the line-up also featured as key members of Blood Incantation, granting some solid cross promotion wherein both bands were just about the only thing many folks were talking about between 2016-2017 thanks to debut LPs from each. ‘Eroded Corridors of Unbeing‘ (2017) wasn’t such a surprising result given the quality of their demo material but it did press beyond a classics-inspired sound in marrying the jogging grind of Swallowed and Krypts with doses of dark ambiance and ‘Antithesis of Light‘-era Evoken‘s shimmering gloom-toned movements. It’d impressed me upon review and I was lucky enough to have caught the band live a few times in the seven year gap between releases.

Shrouded in fog and low-flashing lights Spectral Voice represented a new and tasteful enough presence in the ‘old school’ adjacent death metal headspace, as was the case with Blood Incantation, but with major releases few and far between since the late 2010’s the conundrum arrives in terms of this band having quickly built up a reputation and a sound of their own in the space of a few years and then trickling out minor releases here and there in the extended interim. The guard was lowered, no real expectations were built and I can’t say I was sure what they were doing on last year’s split with Undergang but it’d sounded a bit like a dissonant, unfocused pre-production piece. ‘Sparagmos‘ is a bit of late-set chance to define and characterize Spectral Voice, their deal still reads very similar on paper today, funereal death metal with slow-going and deeply atmospheric reach which is still relevant to modern exaggerations of ‘old school’ muse but much as changed in terms of the sonic reality of the space they inhabit and the less-than blunt motions which frame the first half of the ~46 minute experience.

Are you not entertained? — ‘Sparagmos‘ makes no desperate effort to grab the attention of the unwilling as its slow build appears to burn on for its first two (of four total) pieces, lumbering in a headspace which is initially empyrean in its scope but chthonic and organische as they breach the depth of opener “Be Cadaver”. Looking back upon the band’s discography this approach begins to make sense as a holistic solution to the dichotomy, or, separation between classicist death/doom and their interest in eerie and introspective dark ambient music. This imbues our introductory moments with something less than nausea and anxiety, a purposeful drift into view with drums rolling their tide out slow and several layers of guitar under the influence of various effects create a sense of glowing dread. This is decidedly not as severe as anything on ‘Eroded Corridors of Unbeing‘ and the rasped and spoken-sung vocals of E. Wendler (Black Curse) leave the ear parched and unsure for a solid six minutes of the opener before we begin to strike upon a cavernous death metal riff, tremolo-picked in ominous descent. We get a few punctuative growls and a general sense of menace arrives as pinch harmonics and dissonant chords ring through but the effects-scalded vocal reap is where this opening piece shows the most life when breaking from the growling lows of the piece. Near the endpoint we get a Bell Witch feeling choral line or two to add a resigned, depressive funeral doom touch to “Be Cadaver” as it rests and I couldn’t help but feel like this was already a huge departure from the expectations beyond Spectral Voice‘s debut, I don’t think the devout ‘old school’ folks will be feeling it up front innately.

“Red Feasts Condensed Into One” is decidedly more involved, starting off with another Incantation-esque riff to break through the first couple of minutes with its slow-blasted caverncore-era volleys before retreating and returning in similar segments of time. One of the better riffs on the album hits around ~4:53 minutes, a simple arabesque crawl which briefly twists in a quick motif before ceremonial chimes, horns and wailing souls overtake the piece. You can imagine the back-and-forth of this soundscape versus the riff-after-riff modus of typical classicist death/doom metal as the abyss-settled estrangement of this album plays out throughout the piece, a torsion which (again) does well to imbue this atmospheric death metal album with a deep level of hypnotic loft. Neither a heightened riff count nor strident movement are to be found on Side A but we do get a good sense for the way in which these folks have developed this album for the listener intending to approach their work with immersion in mind, offering a reasonable sitting time and patient nigh funeral death/doom metal level rhythms for the majority of its slithering, whisper-accosted downward drain.

The stairs downward arrive within “Sinew Censer” as we now have a more clear sense of the modus here wherein lead guitars suggest the motion of a riff or reveal a transition-as-direction in phrase and the rhythms follow slowly, usually on a couple of minute delay before they roar back in, the midpoint of the song being a fine enough example. Their realm in the dark and exploration of life and death becoming one sensation altogether persists as the album begins to read as a series of loosely defined movements housed under one collective thought or experience rather than separate songs. While there are a few standout moments each of these works drone together with similar purpose and pacing to the point that the profundity of it all may not hit the first, or fifth time through, especially as “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” drifts off into the distance quietly. Again, this seems to pertain to the major traits of past releases finding a fundamental point of merger here on this sophomore full-length and in this sense I’d say they’ve been successful though much more could be done with the ambiance of the record to make it feel more active rather than purely dissociative.

A fan of the more straight-forward side of Evoken, the sleepier edge of Disembowelment inspired death/doom, or even Tyranny‘s most recent output should not find ‘Sparagmos‘ so alien in terms of the lingering funereal doom to death metal riff ratio being 3:1 respectively, but I would additionally direct folks to Italian group Fuoco Fatuo for a similarly moderne approach to this style or we could cut hard back into the underground classics repertoire and find the certainly more active brunt of Unholy‘s ‘From the Shadows‘ as a simple analogue to an experience which doesn’t concern itself with putting on a heavy metal record so much as it intends to contort the mood and conduct their work from the shadows. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected from Spectral Voice to start as I’d gotten a glimpse of the cover art (per Manifester aka Mat Brinkman) and assumed it’d be a primitive and visceral churn rather than the hypnotic gaze into the abyss that it ultimately is. Working with Arthur Rizk, who recorded, mixed and mastered the band seem to have focused in on the brittle, desperate sensation of funeral doom and how its layering can become nigh psychedelic per its guitar effects and dreaming-dead pace but there is of course also a feverish cavern-core sort of grind going on when things do get more riled up. The two extremes are well emphasized but not separated functionally within the album’s sound design and this creates a satisfyingly blurry, slow-going and most often ominous listening experience.

Fans of funeral death/doom metal and the more atmospheric leanings of pure death metal should still be just as drawn to Spectral Voice as they were back in 2017 for their debut but there’ll be no mistaking just how different ‘Sparagmos‘ is per a somewhat less direct approach. Nonetheless I’d found the full listen only appreciated more with intent listening rather than fully backgrounding it and letting ’em do their thing. Having a bit of patience and paying some mind to the experience was nigh required on my part to fully engage in their ritual. As such, any recommendation will likely depend on your own fortitudes for extreme doom metal and how an occasionally amorphous sense of movement might typically strike you. A high recommendation.

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