SPECTRAL VOICE Necrotic Doom CD

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.