A marked departure from its previous project A Diabolic Thirst in 2021, Spectral Wound’s latest feverish array of spells come packed with more rock and roll than black metal is typically used to. The seven-track Songs of Blood and Mire dwells on venomous aristocratic vibes more than the frozen winds of Norway that gave listeners frostbite on the previous album.
Led by Jonah Campbell, the Canadian outfit has thus far released four albums of varying sounds but all nonetheless cloaked in the unyielding strength, darkness and occultism of the extreme metal subgenre.
The early two albums were relatively straightforward black metal albums while A Diabolic Thirst was, at the time, the band’s most ferocious output, landing itself on high spots on many end-of-the-year metal and mixed music lists.
Going from that album to Songs of Blood and Mire, the distinction is clear: Spectral Wound is out to have fun this time while still steeping itself in the black metal mystique.
Opening with a guitar feed that transitions into distortion-heavy guitars on Fevers and Suffering, Campbell’s signature raspy scream shrieks across the instruments, a proverbial gunshot to mark that the band is back in full force.
The track sonically sounds like a continuation of A Diabolic Thirst’s tracks, before the next takes listeners down a road of Infernal Decadence-era Spectral Wound and classic emperor worship. Not content on shifting gears, the band pivots even harder away from traditional subgenre ideation with the third track Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal.
The eye-raising title track, along with the cover art, may point to a subtle jab by Spectral Wound to other black metal bands with album covers of grown men posing in the dark with their grandmother’s candelabrum.
“We are lost, profligate and wasted. Against laws human and divine. We riot in hell tonight,” Campbell shrieks over the album’s most majestic black and roll riff before the track eventually devolves into a punk breakdown.
That said, the remainder of the album sees Spectral Wound slightly reverting to its original roots while still mixing in the “upbeat” rock and roll riffs, such as Less and Less Human and O Savage Spirit, featuring unhealthy doses of heavy tremolo picking, furious blast beats and mid-paced rock guitars.
Closing off Songs of Blood and Mire are A Coin Upon the Tongue and Twelve Moons in Hell, tracks that embody the band’s commitment to continue pushing its sounds in new rockingly diabolic directions, proving the gaping abyss of black metal still has something to offer purists and newcomers.
The album is recommended listening!
