Spectral Voice – Sparagmos (Review)

This is the second album from US death/doom band Spectral Voice.

Featuring members of Black Curse and Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice play the sort of humungous death doom that crushes mountains and destroys villages. Sparagmos boasts 46 minutes of material that’s as distressing as it is rewarding.

These four abyssal songs drown the listener in a churning maelstrom of malignant dread and terror. Initial reference points for navigating the dark world of Spectral Voice include such bands as Ataraxie, Incantation, Slow, Mournful Congregation, Atramentus, Convocation, and Esoteric. However, you can also hear elements of acts like Khanate, Bell Witch, and Ævangelist in Spectral Voice’s nightmarish sound, allowing Sparagmos to achieve more than that of your average death/doom band.

The music deals in macabre atmosphere and morbid heaviness. From funereal intensity to brutal horror, Sparagmos is an unrelenting tide of death, doom, and destruction. Eerie sounds accompany you, the unwilling victim, on this trip to the grave. Spectral Voice incorporate a range of devilish moods and sinister flourishes into their colossal doom, while also ensuring that the crushing bite of death metal is never too far away. Blackened corruption can be harrowingly felt too, twisting and warping all that it touches. Sparagmos is not for those easily unnerved.

This is a masterclass in combining doom, death metal, and atmospheric components into compelling extremity. The songwriting finely balances a mood-focused approach with a memorability that’s unusual for the style. Despite how grim and evil Sparagmos undeniably is, it is remarkable how enjoyable it is too.

Yep, this one’s a keeper. If you’re a fan of death/doom that’s simply better than most, Sparagmos is essential. Spectral Voice have produced something monstrously notable here.