After a series of demos and splits starting from 2014, the U.S. band Spectral Voice reach their first full length revealing themselves as one of the most pleasant surprises of the year. The death doom proposed by the band from Denver, composed for three quarters, drummer/singer excluded, by members of the deathsters Blood Incantation, is purely of overseas matrix, thus proving to be a sort of trait of union between the asphyxiating death of Incantation (precisely) and the most extreme doom and mostly without melodic outlets in Evoken and Disembowelment quota. From the first notes, the work of Spectral Voice appears to be aimed at creating leaden and threatening atmospheres, with the strings of the instruments lowered to the extreme to create a wall of impenetrable and gloomy incommunicability, without disdaining even disturbed gasps of ambient matrix. The longest song of the lot, Visions Of Psychic Dismemberment, is the summa of the good compositional work of Spectral Voice, but all the rest of the work is placed on the same level, resulting monolithic but of considerable thickness and intensity; after all, when ours push from the parts of Evoken, even the sound acquires a minimum of breath thanks to more clear guitar arpeggios (Lurking Gloom and Terminal Exhalation Of Being) without losing for a moment its mephitic grip on the psyche of the listener. Eroded Corridors Of Unbeing is a slow and painful dragging along a steep path and the landing place even less welcoming than the starting point: along the “eroded corridors” we are led with faltering step in a place where the horror can not be described in words, in deference to the narrative method used by Lovecraft, whose work could be perfectly complementary to a musical approach of this tenor. Really a very good record, that the fans of the bands mentioned as possible deities of Spectral Voice should not miss.

2017 – Dark Descent Records