Vengeful Spectre - Vengeful Spectre (2020)^{Release ID: 16007}

This is the debut album from a black metal band hailing from Guangdong, China and it's pretty damn effective. Six tracks (basically five since "Hermit" serves as an interlude) of pure, aggressive black metal with a distinctly Chinese twist. The songwriting on this album is pretty damn excellent; the guitar play on these tracks is memorable and engaging. The bass does have a little bit of a problem projecting throughout, but that seems mostly because of its lack of unique and separate lines from the rhythm guitar. The drum work on this album is pretty over the top and very impressive. The vocals are probably my least favourite part of the album since they do sound like they are being filtered through studio effects, as well the overall timbre of the shrieking style has never truly been my thing to begin with. They remind me more in the vein of a band like The Black Dahlia Murder.

But I can look over these vocals because, once again, where this album separates itself from so many other black metal albums are in the song constructions. This unique brand of East Asian oriental instrumentation, including flutes and guzheng is one of a kind in heavy metal in 2020 as far as I can tell. And they are wonderfully incorporated into the heavier sections; there is a section on "Rainy Night Carnage" in which the guzheng is given an extended solo and whoever is playing it does their best shredding impression. I do have to dock some points however because almost all of these songs do follow a very similar formula with their ambient, nature introductions before exploding into the metal ideas. 

But hell yeah I can jive to this! Maybe with time the band can do something about the vocal mixing, as well as come up with some more original ideas, but this is a very solid debut record and I'm looking forward to seeing what these guys can do next.

This is the debut album from Guangdong Province's 殞煞 (a.k.a. Vengeful Spectre). Now I've got to admit to being fairly ignorant as to the extent and veracity of the chinese black metal scene, but if this is anything to go by, then it's got to be in fairly good shape. I don't want to sound patronising, but this took me completely by surprise and it fuckin' rips! Ferocious sounding, well-written melodic black metal that also incorporates elements of chinese folk music in a really organic way that works fantastically well. In fact, I really can't believe how superbly the folk elements work, but the tremolo nature of chinese strings is absolutely made for black metal and I've always loved the sound of those bamboo flutes anyway. The singer shrieks and screams his way through the tracks in a manner that must have left his vocal chords in tatters come album's end. I have no idea what he's singing, but it sounds amazing and I'm sure must be something to do with honourable battle and all that - just check out the cover (which is also gorgeous). It may be a little overproduced for black metal, sounding very clean indeed, but it seems a minor quibble to complain that it "doesn't sound shitty enough for black metal" when the music just works so damn well. These Chinese Rocks - and I'm hooked!