Necrotic Doom

Pretty sure I put this album on first while in the car going to grab some milk.. Never has a quick grocery run been so intense. Spectral Voice do a ridiculous job on this demo, and it's worth everyone's time.

Honestly it's a surprisingly accessible little demo. "Slowed down Incantation plus Bolt Thrower" is a good enough description, but the deep, putrid atmosphere is mixed throughout with really great riffs and leads that balance crushing density and heaviness with memorability. I find myself noodling b-grade copies of "Horrid Phantasm" riffs pretty much endlessly whenever I pick up a guitar, and I doubt I'm the only one. All these dark, echoing leads, that crunching doom outro, the kick ass mid tempo riff in the middle of the song, there's such a richness of ideas in that song, and in the rest of the demo for that matter. For a sub genre that is oft criticized for putting atmosphere over riffs, I feel this is a great exception (or refutation) of that rule; it delivers on the atmosphere but demands that you bang your head.

Everything's in the right place. The production is definitely demo quality, but the raw, cymbal heavy drum tone, the muddy, chunky guitar tone that's tuned down to z (but maintains clarity thanks to less distortion than you'd expect) , the back in the mix, cavernous vocals.. Man everything you need to hear is there, and in the perfect place. Like all the best metal- regardless of genre- there's plenty of tempo changes and they're all very well executed. There's just this touch of Disembowelment in some of the leads too, which is a pretty sweet cherry on top.

A fantastic demo with as many good riffs as most bands release in their entire careers. Definitely worth getting.

Well, shit - Necrotic Doom is one of the better demos I've heard in a long while. Spectral Voice play death/doom in the filthiest vein possible. Cavernous, swampy and just all-around revoltingly dirty, their murky sound is one to behold. While this definitely is demo-quality material, it is still very enjoyable and in some ways the lo-fi approach fits their sound. Even if their sound isn't particularly original, the quality of the riffs, the murky atmosphere and the general feeling of dread it invokes makes this a very promising demo.

There seems to be three types of riffs that provide the backbone for Necrotic Doom. For the death metal portion of their sound they go for the more angular style of riffing prevalent in Bolt Thrower's Realm of Chaos/War Master era. Even a Demilich comparison does not seem unwarranted here. The doom riffs are fucking filthy - coming across like some ancient behemoth trudging through a putrid swamp. Quite sludgy, these riffs have a hell of a lot of power behind them and really steal the show. The final set of riffs are mid paced tremolo, giving this release a slight black metal tint. These often weave in behind a doom riff or a twisted melody and provide solid fortification. However, when they come into the spotlight as the main attraction they don't fair particularly well. It's not that they particularly blow or anything; they're just not that interesting when put besides massive doom lurches and pointy Bolt Thrower-esque goodness.

The bass tone is fucking awesome on this demo and completely fitting for their disgusting sound. It is lower than your grandpa's balls and distorted into oblivion. It's a large part of what makes this demo so goddamn heavy and when everything drops out and the bass heaves on it bears the pungency and mass of a wounded beast trudging through raw sewage. I find it kind of odd that the drums bothered me so much for a demo, but this is by far my biggest gripe. While the drumming itself is pretty barebones, the biggest problem here is that the drums are mixed very badly. During the slow sections it seems like he is just hitting the crash cymbal every few seconds because everything else is all but drowned out. There are a few moments where the double bass should be really powerful, but it is mixed so low that it's robbed of all impact. Special Voice, Blood Incantation and Abysmal Dimensions all seem to be pretty incestuous, and it does seem like they will have the same drummer as those two aforementioned bands in the future, which will definitely be for the best.

Sure, this does suffer from some problems typical of demo releases, but if the quality of Necrotic Doom is any indicator, their full length will be absolutely beastly when they get around to making it. If you're looking for something strikingly original, this isn't your best bet. However, these dudes play some pretty sweet to-the-point death/doom in the filthiest way possible. That's definitely enough for me to have a pretty solid time.

It's really releases like this one that keep my interest in straightforward, wretched, cavernous death metal burning brightly. To get it out there, there's absolutely nothing about Spectral Voice's Necrotic Doom that is in the least bit surprising or unexpected. Everything is just so, riffs unfolding exactly as they ought to, everything in its right place. Surely that description makes this sound formulaic or uninspired, but between the sheer weight of the sonics, the extremely high quality of the riffs and the undeniable ugliness of every aspect of the music, this is really more a demonstration of the potential for excellence in this niche-cum-zeitgeist reign of cavernous death metal in the extreme metal underground. It's really not shocking in the least bit that genre flag-bearers Dark Descent Records snapped this band up with proper haste following the release of this demo, though I'm sure it helped that they're also Colorado natives.

The band does have something of an unorthodox lineup: EW handles guitar, drums and vocals on the demo while PR is on guitar, bass and synth duty, but these two guys just play drums and guitar, respectively, live, with a permanent cast of three other guys to round out the live lineup, though the band considers these to be real band members rather than just hired guns for live gigs. It will be interesting to see if, as the band undoubtedly picks up steam and press and puts out a full length, if this live lineup is folded into the recording process.

The band basically sounds like if you took the vaguely blackened, mega-evil Bolt Throwerisms of the sorely missed Slugathor and married them to the filthy wretchedness of Disma. Even though Disma themselves clearly draw a lot of influence from Incantation, I think Spectral Voice pull yet more from that depthless fount of darkness, as their faster riffs are sometimes slightly more technical than Disma yet there's also probably even more emphasis on dragging doom sections. There's apocalyptic tremolo ("Diffluence of Ruined Graves"), there are squealing pinch harmonics to accentuate particularly brutal chug-heavy riffs ("Horrid Phantasm") and there is even watery, chorused lead guitar that adds to the swampy dread atmosphere. The main riffing style is a chug-heavy groove pace with trailing tremolo, the pace set by rolling double bass drums with slow-motion snare drum hits that, along with the dragged-out subterranean vocals, serve to give the band a decidedly slow, crawling pace even when the guitars and bass drums are charging along at a steady clip.

In the space of just three tracks, Spectral Voice have quickly catapulted themselves to a position near the top of my list of demo-only death metal bands from which I can't wait to hear full length debuts (Cruciamentum being the other, of course). These guys really know how to conjure a massive, dreadful, crushing atmosphere and have the songwriting chops to know when they should ease off the pressure by shifting to a bludgeoning battery of double bass and supercharged earth mover riffing, making excellent use of their two guitars in key moments where one guitar peels off into searing, molten tremolo leads while the other keeps applying sheer mass through powerchord assaults. Though they're just a young band, showing this level of song and riff-writing mastery is extremely exciting. That they've also got an ear for precisely perfect production also earns them few further points. Bring the full length!