Ah, fear—a souvenir for the living. Fear, in and of itself, is subjective. However, certain situations and experiences fall into the “objective” category. For example, suppose you find yourself the victim of insects burrowing, bulging, and crawling beneath your skin, or with the sudden knowing—while sitting in an empty room—that you’re not actually alone. But let’s look at the glass half full, friends: the sight and sensation of a little pest sneaking its way below your dermis or a dreadful encounter with an entity from another plane of existence, at the very least, remind you that you are alive, right?
Since then, Eroded Corridors of Unbeing has been a little bug squirming its way from the first layers of my skin to the depth of my bones, lingering like a hitchhiking ghost. In other words, I routinely go back to that record. At the very least, it gets a few spins every few months from me. But now, finally—FINALLY—we’ve been gifted a new Spectral Voice album. And much like the stigmata and the album’s namesake, Sparagmos, I was prepared to let it pierce my skin and rip me limb from limb.
In typical death-doom fashion, Sparagmos is four songs, just eclipsing 45 minutes. We’re dropped head-first into “Be Cadaver,” which, right from the get-go, feels much more dense production-wise than Eroded Corridors of Unbeing. On the surface, what seems like a stereotypical wall of heavy, doom-laden riffs and a pulsating kick drum is more so the exposition of the first act of a horror movie, as you’ll—spoiler alert—soon find out. As the echoes of the power chords ring out—there’s a lot of reverb on this record, but I love it—at around the 3:15 mark, a fill makes way for a blood-curdling screech before we’re met with the hallowed lows heard on their debut. The gradual build-up to the halfway point of the song feels almost cinematic. Six minutes in, anxiety-inducing tremolo-picked riffs gradually build to an even more grandiose high-pitched yelp that, to be honest, caught me off my guard, much like that jump scare from the Exorcist III (Google it).
Even on the first track, without beating around the bush, it becomes evident quickly that Spectral Voice is even more cerebral on Sparagmos. Just listen to how “Be Cadaver” transitions into the subsequent offering, “Red Feasts Condensed into One”—a spectacular use of instrumentation to build that unnerving atmosphere. If Eroded Corridors… was at a seven, they turned the knob to 10 here. Everything seems much more calculated and sketched out. At points, Sparagmos sounds like Onward to Golgotha, Call of the Wretched Seas, and The Dark Side of the Moon, if it were recorded in Lucifer’s basement, were blended and played in the background during a bad trip. With some psychedelia influence and their signature death-doom sound, “Red Feasts Condensed into One” covers it all.
“Sinew Censer” is the shortest and perhaps the straightest to-the-point track on the record, displaying uptempo speeds before sudden halts into sub-30 BPM interludes. The final two minutes, however, are straight-up thick, neck-breaking death metal. The vocals here feel slimy, slithering their way into your skull. And while not as grandiose as the prior tracks, “Sinew Censer” is a nice predecessor to the hypnotic finale, “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity.” While the B-side feels less “supernatural,” for lack of a better description, it exemplifies that the lines between the otherworldly and reality are blurred only slightly.
Speaking of reality, the reality here is that Spectral Voice released something far superior to Eroded Corridors of Unbeing. Sparagmos is a monumental accomplishment and one of the finest death-doom releases in recent memory. There are moments here that will challenge you, the listeners. Great art withstands the test of time, and I assure you this record will do just that. The sounds of fear will linger with you long after the final notes tread off into nothingness. Like a botfly under your skin or a ghost you can’t pray away, Sparagmos sinks its teeth into you, refusing to let go.
