In the frenzied ritualistic worship of the god Dionysus, acolytes would often perform the violent act known as Sparagmos—tearing limb-from-limb a sacrificial animal, or human.12 What ecstatic human hands would enact, Spectral Voice conjures in their sophomore bearing its moniker, their attempt to reach “the moment in which – through sacrifice – atavistic wildness is unleashed, and the ultimate exaltation of life through death is realized.” To do so the group—composed of all three stringsmen of Blood Incantation, and drummer and vocalist E. Wendler—wield an eerie, dense, and crushing death-doom, this time with the eeriness, the density, and the crushing amped up thousandfold from debut Eroded Corridors of Unbeing. Along the way, as it veers into caverns of dissonant extreme metal, it grows more frightening and absorbing than anything I’ve heard in a long while.
As a vehicle for death-obsessed delirium, Sparagmos could hardly do better. Channeling that most eerie about Esoteric, the weirdest and most sinister about Worm, and the massiveness of early Ahab, Spectral Voice is still more hellish, deeper, and more enormous. Dense reverberation and the gut-twisting presence of bass feedback coat everything with a sticky black tar of engrossing magnetism. Chords crawl with mesmerizing presence; percussion thumps and smashes as if to ring out forever into the darkness; alternately gurgled, shrieked, whispered, and shouted vocals echo. And yet also, as this creeping nightmare plunges into episodes of frantic blastbeating, twisting, barbed riffs, and unhinged vocal assaults (“Red Feasts Condensed into One,” “Sinew Censor”), or pulls all back but a single resounding guitar (“Be Cadaver,” “Red…” “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity”), this same omnipresent oppressive atmosphere causes distorted refrains to lull with decisive resonance, and enhances the mania wrought by overlapping, multi-tracked strings and vocals, as all bounce off one another in a reflective, cavernous void (“Red…,” “Sinew Censor,” “Death’s Knell…”). It’s terrifying. And it’s also captivating. At one moment paralysingly slow, funereal, unfathomably deep. At another disquietingly still. At yet another demonically frenetic, confusing, and unsettling.
Like the bewitching guile of the god, Sparagmos utterly arrests and draws in its listener. Coming into being through liquid, sonorous plucks (“Be Cadaver,” “Sinew Censor,” “Death’s Knell…”) it envelops with the devastating weight of infinite chords and thunderous bass drum. Once hooked, one is dragged through horrifying tunnels of impossibly clustered, layered vocals and whipped by tangled, dissonant tremolos (“Be Cadaver,” “Red…,” “Death’s Knell”). Suddenly stripped-back (“Sinew Censor”) or breathlessly clear (“Be Cadaver,” “Red…,” “Death’s Knell…”), warbles of guitar float upwards towards the surface like blood in water, precipitating a return to the churning dissodeath of before (“Red…,”) or a fall back into stalking purposefulness (“Be Cadaver,” “Death’s Knell…”). This ebb and flow from solemnity to ecstasy lend the whole the air of ceremony, also borne out by the instrumentation itself. Out of the dying glow of fading riffs, the taps and rings of cymbal bleed into the clanging of a bell (“Be Cadaver,” “Death’s Knell…”) and the shaking of tambourines; distorted notes into the atonal trumpeting of horn (“Red…”). And emerging from it all, comes the elucidation of epiphany in lamenting, mournful refrains that are spellbindingly beautiful against such dark claustrophobia (“Be Cadaver,” “Red…,” “Death’s Knell…”).
Because of how totally Sparagmos dominates the space it enters, it is compelling in a way that superficially similar music might not be. Somehow its leaden abysses do not drag, and its nerve-wracking spasms do not alienate. Instead, these tracks are so well composed, so delicately developed, that one feels as much a part of the proceedings as a witness. The master is fairly dense, to be sure. One can question just how much more momentous this could become with just a little more room to breathe. Yet simultaneously, there’s also the important recognition that music like this works best when it can crush and overcome its audience, filling every inch with its resounding, ringing presence.
Sparagmos more than lives up to its conceptual title. It rends its listener apart with devastating violence and mesmerizing inevitability. And it’s weirdly one of the most beautiful death-doom experiences I’ve ever had. Spectral Voice succeeded. I’m overcome. This is a force that dares you to face it. Final track “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” is well-named. It, and its three companions before it, are as inexorable as death.
Rating: Excellent
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Descent Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: February 9th, 2024
