Spectral Wound – Songs Of Blood and Mire
Release Date: 23rd August 2024
Label: Profound Lore Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal.
FFO: Hulder, Mgła, Kvaen, 1349, Sargeist.
Review By: Rick Farley
Raw but still well produced black metal is hard to come by these days. It’s either one extreme or the other, a tin can or severely polished. One modern black metal band that defies this is Montreal, Quebec’s Spectral Wound. 100 percent second wave influenced, harsh, cold black metal that not only sounds good but feels like it could come out of your speaker and rip your flesh off. Sorrowful, intensely spiteful and with layered atmosphere.
Songs of Blood and Mire is the bands fourth full length, bringing full circle its visceral, furious, and melodic darkness to the masses. Being unleashed by Profound Lore Records, Spectral Wound, to quote an excerpt from the press release, is “music for the poisoned, the futile, the debauched and the profane”. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty fucking black metal to me.
The songwriting on Songs of Blood and Mire is bone chilling. Every track feels like an extension of the other, without redundancy. The flow from beginning to end seamlessly passes by with zero fatigue and leaves you feeling wretched and haunted yet fully realized. There is a melancholy to the chaotic intensity of the music that leaves an everlasting impression of sombre dreadfulness. Almost as if the album is taking possession of your conscience with soothing yet malicious intent. Personally, when music affects me this way, it says a lot about how skilled the songwriting is, as well as the musicianship being shown. Songs of Blood and Mire is a complete album that is meant to be heard in its entirety.
Manic drums, blood-curdling screams, and frigid guitars come in aggressive waves of emptiness and despair. It’s a distressing feeling to be feeling hopeful as you’re freely walking straight into a hellish fire beneath frozen cavern walls, entering into the burning unknown. Unsure if you will be burned to death or pass through safely to the other side.
The vocals are shrieking with a wailing intensity, claustrophobic and untamed. The guitars burn with a storminess that is soothing yet fiercely dangerous. Tremolo barbarity, with frosty melodic flourishes, rip through the enveloping darkness. The low end is rich in fullness without being too audible. Black metal that still maintains this balance between screeching treble and deeper bass tones always contrast well in my opinion. It has to be there to feel it, but it doesn’t need to stand out. The percussive aspects are full on blasting to simply serving the song with overwhelming force, well-placed fills and drums that just work in the context of the song.
Tracks like Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal has a bounciness that is aggressive and punky, drawing the line somewhere between black n roll and blackened thrash, while tracks like The Horn Marauding blasts viciously in cold, searing tremolo guitar lines and ethereal atmospheric melodies. Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit is an onslaught of bestial, hammering black metal, full on chaos and brutality. Spectral Wound does an excellent job of blending those elements into one savage, unified sound. The sound of your ruination.
“Here we wallow, here we writhe like a serpent with a broken spine.”
Songs of Blood and Mire is not bringing anything new to the table, but for those of us who couldn’t care less about innovation in our black metal, this one is high quality. Honestly, I would be shocked if any black metal fan regardless of subgenre be disappointed in this album. Easy recommend.
(4.5 / 5)
