Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Spektr - Cypher (2013)

I am not averse to experimentation. Indeed, some of my favourite artists enjoy such status because they can push boundaries and invent new angles and perspectives on classic sounds that I have been familiar with from as far back as my formative years in metal in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Taking a relevant geographical reference for this review Blut Aus Nord are a successful French bm band who have continually incorporated more ambient yet also industrial sounds into their once very conventional atmo-bm sound. I actively seek vinyl copies of BAN records; such is the value I attribute to them.

Spektr are just mental by way of comparison. They appear to be billed as a bm band with industrial and ambient influence when the reality is that they are a confusing mishmash of all the above that gets jazz, down-tempo and a multitude of spoken word clips and samples thrown in to boot. They constantly use this bizarre, warped guitar riff (the same one, for nine tracks – barring the intro tracks) and use a stop/start arrangement to the album structure allowing shorter transitional pieces to introduce longer tracks. This gets disorientating, even without the “piled-on” nature of the track content that runs for anything up to 11 minutes in some instances.

They have drums on here apparently. I say “apparently” because I cannot hear them half the time. They struggle to successfully find purchase in most tracks and sound completely drowned in the mix and lost altogether on many occasions. This may well have been a conscious decision; I am not suggesting that this is due to accidental production quirks. The duo who recorded this want the guitar and horrific atmospheres to take centre stage, I get that. However, unlike with MoRT from the French icons BAN, there is no dissonance for me to track throughout Cypher. Granted that riff I mentioned makes a play for the benchmark element, but it does not quite carry the same hold as the haunting dissonance that BAN conjure.

The industrial vibes are also not that strong to my ears. I mean they are there most definitely, but I am not left feeling I have endured a punishing or all that taxing journey through the usual assorted clangs, clashes, and mining detail of an outright industrial-influenced record. I think this is due to the strong bass presence that seems to mute these harsher edges somewhat. The bass seems to be the most chilled element of proceedings following a more relaxed jazz vibe, again which maybe an intentional thing but it just creates too much of an opposite for the combination to work for me.

Now, note that at no point in this review have I called out Cypher as being a bad album. In fact, if I wanted some background music it works brilliantly; this most certainly is not an album to sit and listen to with nothing else going on at the time. It is a flawed album that lacks the maturity to balance conflicting elements correctly. In order to blend elements like this successfully you would need to be much more extreme than this and as such Cypher feels like an album that is pulling me in more than one direction as a result of it not being able to define its own direction.