Spectral Wound - Songs of Blood and Mire (2024)^{Release ID: 54466}

In a futile attempt to clean up my metal listening in 2024, December (and likely into January) is the month I will be bolstering the more extreme clans here at Metal Academy that I frequent the least (i.e. Fallen, Horde and North), so there are going to be a lot of short little blurbs about a handful of records I heard in 2024. Hopefully, I'll be able to do something a little bit more timely come 2025.

From the budding Montreal black metal scene, Spectral Wound return following 2021's A Diabolical Thirst with another audible assault of classically influenced black metal. Songs of Blood and Mire hits you right out of the gate with a cacophony of sound from the blast beat percussion, tremolo guitars, an actual bass line, and barely audible screeching vocals. And in this case, it actually works to Spectral Wound's benefit since it directs most of melodic focus on the guitar, which does sound quite fruitful in its presentation, execution and development. The punk aesthetic that shows up on "At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls" is a stylistic choice for the band and leaves the listener with a different style of intensity than experienced before. What's more is that these punk grooves do appear sporadically throughout the rest of the album for some nice reprieve. "Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal" is the, relatively speaking, cooler song on the album where melody reigns supreme and rage takes a backseat. It likely would have been a better track if it had been saved maybe a song or two later.

I will say that Songs of Blood and Mire is a better record than A Diabolical Thirst and that will likely be enough for most. However, like with the last album, I found the record to get a little stale during its second half as many of the variations to the sound became less prominent as the record dipped back into a very comfortable melodic black metal approach. The first four track of the album are worth the price of admission alone, but the record goes on for too long with not enough variety to warrant the extended runtime. 

Best Songs: Fevers and Suffering, At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls, Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal, A Coin Upon the Tongue

For the past decade or so, black metal releases have come at the rate of three to four thousand a year and a significant number of these are, to be frank, sub-standard efforts. Atmospheric, dissonant and avant-garde sub-genres are in the ascendancy and a vociferous portion of fans seem to want metal bands to be forever pushing the envelope. Within this landscape I, for one, am glad there are still bands, like Spectral Wound, that hark back to the genre's early nineties beginnings and understand that it is still possible to produce black metal that has actual tunes, whilst not compromising on the visceral savagery that is at the heart of it's ethos.

I was a big fan of the Quebecois five-piece's previous album, 2021's A Diabolic Thirst, so I was already well predisposed to their latest. Since A Diabolic Thirst there has been one personnel change, with Sean Zumbusch being replaced by Cauchemar bassist, Andres Arango, on second guitar. Even so, Spectral Wound haven't missed a step and time will tell, but I believe Songs of Blood and Mire is the band's best work to date, sounding like the product of a band who are supremely confident in their ability to deliver their vision faultlessly. Their songwriting is pretty much flawless, with well-written riffs that have an inherent memorability, yet which still project an icy savagery that belies their melodicism. Vocalist Jonah Campbell possesses a vitriolic shriek that doubles-down on the instrumental viciousness and ensures that there is no misconception about just how blasphemic these guys are. There are some nice tempo changes, from Celtic Frost-inspired chuggy slower sections to full-on, blistering, blastbeat-led, sharp-edged charges and brief black 'n' roll outbursts, rendering any possible accusations of saminess invalid. The lyrical content is almost gothic, but very black metal, concerning as it does, the occult predilections of the protagonist, who comes across like a fallen knight of old whose pursuit of forbidden knowledge has damned his soul. Technically, all five seem, to my untrained ears at least, to be exceedingly proficient with never a missed beat or note to be found anywhere.

The whole album feels very heavy for black metal, more akin to death metal in the heaviness stakes, whilst still unashamedly residing in the black metal realm. The production may have something to do with this heaviness as it is quite robust and deep, like a full-bodied red wine and it veers away from the thin, lo-fi sound you may normally expect with similar material, which works exceedingly well here. The production also plays no favourites, a crystal clarity and with all the band members being well-represented in the mix each has ample opportunity to shine.

I have to say, I am especially impressed by Songs of Blood and Mire. I was honestly starting to believe that black metal's best releases were all firmly in the past, but these guys have thankfully showed me the errors of such defeatist thinking and proved that the heart of black metal is still capable of pumping icy blood into the veins of the world's metal hordes even in these anodyne, corporation-dominated times. Come, enter the crypt and be saved.