Spectral Incursion

Love this band but don’t know why I have completely forgotten about them with time; a shame cause they strictly belong up there with the finest practitioners from the States, a very short-lived phenomenon which came and went ephemerally, pretty much like those spectres and apparitions that breeze by undetected and unregistered.

But we will register these lads, right here right now, and we will make sure we keep them in a safe place in our memory bank from now on, including the short stint they had under the name Graven Image (one demo, 1987) as an inauguration gesture. Later some of the material from that first appearance got transferred on the Spectral Incursion debut demo, a really handsome slab of quirky progressive heavy/power metal reminiscent of the works of visionary acts like Slauter Xstroyes, Realm and Fates Warning.

As said demo was nearly 50-min long, the guys didn’t need to exert themselves on the EP here, and they have provided a most fabulous digestion of the previous recording by extracting the four best compositions from it. The seeping drama on “Rails” spearheads the fiesta this number restlessly jumping from heavy seismic sections to entangled vortex-like riff-patterns just like that, the enchanting multi-layered music accompanied by very cool attached clean vocals and stupendous melodic lead sections. A totally arresting beginning which seamlessly flows into “The Other Side”, which shows the guys’ other all-instrumental side with flying contrived rhythms piling on top of each other, creating a dazzling virtuoso chaos, a hallucinogenic trip that doesn’t miss out on a couple of more vigorous less outlandish passages. The creepy sinister rhythms on “Beneath Your Lives” suddenly turn into chapters from Shrapnel lore the band shredding dexterously with slow-burning patience, with surging gallops timely unleashed for the creation of a consummate epic progressive opus, a depleting summative exercise after which only a short jumpy, more orthodox cut like “Last of the Torment” can do the trick, this one a memorable sing-alonger with echoes of early Savatage.

A sheer no-brainer, an absorbing complex slab of old school metal that added more to the fascinating group of underground US acts (Myramainz, Sedition, Savage Choir, Silo, Brothers Grimm, Suiciety, etc.) who kept the audience on their toes with more crooked contrived musical forms. The band here are the most melodic of the lot as they never got tempted to hit the more aggressive thrashy parametres, but their brand of forward-thinking mind-stimulating metal was a wonder to listen to, brushing aside minor hindrances like the muddy production and a couple of hissing reverberations, mostly on the debut effort.

The “Middle of Nowhere” demo was another impressive portion of complex, not very conventional sounds the guys ending their very short career on a high. The Anthology contains all their material, including the one from the Graven Image demo, and was followed three years later by a reunion stint… only under a different name, Doctor Smith, whose full-length “Into the Unknown” is a fairly interesting spacey progressive metal opera, not an exact take on the musicians’ older style but engaging and intriguing enough to be considered a worthy sequel. That same Doctor is still operational although I kind of prefer the early more subversive spectral visitations… they used to scare me more, you see.