Review by Sonny for Spectral Lore - Ετερόφωτος (2021)

I really loved last year's collaboration between Spectral Lore and Mare Cognitum. Happily both bands have gone on to issue terrific albums in their own right this year. Spectral Lore, though, have gone for a bit of a change in atmosphere and the expansive, cosmic nature of their work on Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine has given way to a much more aggressive set of tracks that don't skimp on the blasting and pummel away on your eardrums with a palpable viciousness which feels more closely related to Castles Conquered and Reclaimed, the album he also released last year as Mystras. This is still essentially an atmospheric black metal release and despite the blasting, frantic tremolo picking and ragged shrieking of more orthodox black metal it has some nice exotic-sounding melodies underneath that may or may not derive from the folk music of Nihilus' native Greece. The album closer, Terean, is a nineteen minute curveball, being an ambient track that acts as a kind of comedown from the intensity of the previous hour's black metal assault, allowing the listener some time to breathe and re-adjust as he or she transitions back from Nihilus' world of densely layered and dark, atmospheric savagery back into the familiar normality of the real world

At 76 minutes it's a bit of a beast, but I never found myself getting bored and remained engaged with the music and the atmosphere it created for it's entire runtime.