Spectral Wound’s aura is so finely tuned that it must’ve been meticulously crafted. Or so you’d believe based on the evidence; their black metal is simultaneously frigid and exuberant. They are as poetic as they are vague, frequently resisting the urge to explain themselves too much (check the third question). They prefer to be taken as an entity, creating a barrier between their lives as musicians and their identities outside the band, though they don’t conceal their faces or names. And their latest album Songs of Blood and Mire is sharp and decisive. Despite all this, they are not so strategic. They possess an attitude best compared to a bar regular recounting his actions from the night prior: “No, we almost never make conscious decisions, really.”
The Montreal group’s upcoming fourth record continues what its predecessor, A Diabolic Thirst, merely insinuated–bringing the buried corpse of rock and roll closer to black metal’s surface. You could call it celebratory, or, if you want to stretch the description, punky. They’d both fit on a cursory level, though speaking with Spectral Wound reveals they’re merely skin-deep.
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“Songs of Blood and Mire is a bit more rock and roll. We’ve always been big heavy metal listeners. That’s where we come from, and it’s a bit more palpable on Songs of Blood and Mire, even though I still wouldn’t say it’s poppier. I don’t think we were intentionally trying to make something that was easier on anybody. I think we just followed our inclinations in slightly different ways. “
Simply put, Spectral Wound have armed themselves with stronger hooks and more bravado. These characteristics were present, albeit more subdued, on A Diabolic Thirst, especially with “Frigid and Spellbound.” That sadistic black metal cut is over seven minutes long and feels like a crossover hit in the afterlife. There’s something enchanting in those guitar harmonies. The track’s million-plus streams on Spotify agree. Although Songs of Blood and Mire’s songs all run less than seven minutes, many of them pull from the framework of “Frigid and Spellbound.” It’s as if they’re gunning for the top spot among the band’s touring setlist. Despite this, they’re not signs of oncoming good times.
“The horrible fact, the horrible reality, is not that the world is ending; it’s that it isn’t,” the band says. “In that way, A Diabolic Thirst was a bit more of a product of its moment than the previous records. Songs of Blood and Mire comes out of inhabiting that world that didn’t end. And so there’s a bit of, I wouldn’t say optimism, but there is some exultancy to it. There’s something celebratory to it, but it’s not optimistic.”
The main point Spectral Wound make is not that they’ve found joy in a dour circumstance. Their now-pronounced swagger is a byproduct of what they were listening to while writing the album. Though not their intention, in practice, it mimics the idea that carelessness rises from end times. Spectral Wound rebels against this carelessness, elaborating as such:
“A Diabolic Thirst took shape almost in resistance to apocalyptic thinking. I have a distrust of the desire for release and resolution that apocalypticism represents. People tend to get this way and think that something happens every 50 years, a hundred years nowadays, or basically every ten years. That, in general, there’s a cultural conviction that we are on the precipice. That the world is going to end or be redeemed. And I don’t trust the optimism of that–meaning, when you’re convinced the world is about to end, there’s an optimism there because it means you have to stop dealing with it.”
Given this, the group isn’t reveling in the lack of a conclusion nor mourning the end of life on Songs of Blood and Mire. Rather, they are charting the feeling that comes from realizing life continues, and with that, so do responsibilities. You may have survived a flood, but you still need to clock into work the next morning. When asked if one could describe the record’s nigh-celebratory posturing as “a pig rolling in shit,” the band responded, “I mean, perhaps. Although, pigs apparently roll in shit to keep cool. And I don’t know if the shit rolling that we’re doing is as functional as that, but there is something to that statement.”
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The group’s subject matter has changed as well, shifting from myths, forests, and Satan to “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal.” An attention-grabbing name if there ever was one, though the track does not engage with any political topics. It illuminates the disconnect between an aristocratic mindset—not aristocratic people—and reality. It’s an example of how Spectral Wound songs portray concepts just outside of human reach. Although they’ve moved away from the abstract and celestial, they’re not materialists.
“‘Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal’ is about a rejection of simplicity, a rejection of a celebration of excess and ornament and the baroque and the unnecessary. It is against purity, against spartanism, against the notion of cleanness and strength and solidity. It is a celebration of decay and decline, which is even more explicitly developed in ‘At Wine-Dark Midnight in Mouldering Halls.’ The songs taken together represent negation as a rallying cry, even at the same time, there’s a recognition that if the world is dissolving and collapsing now, it’s impossible to disentangle the aristocracy from that. It’s simultaneously a collapse that is brought about by the aristocratic, but really has no place for the aristocratic anymore because so much of existence is now automated and standardized and optimized, all of which are things that are antithetical to the aristocratic, which is very superfluous and erratic.”
Even standing beside the rest of Songs of Blood and Mire, “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” is one of the Spectral Wound’s most hedonic cuts. Irregardless of its distortion and harsh vocals, it’s arena-rock like, not because it has a glossy finish, but because it broadcasts a sentiment that’s easily identified and palpable that it could fill an arena. It boasts what some could call “big sexy guitar riffs,” but the band preferred to say, “There’s something rousing to the guitars.”
It’s a far cry from the foreboding darkness in a riff like “Slaughter of the Medusa” from Infernal Decadence. That feeling has been usurped by an amoral canter, a dance in the dusk of a failed apocalypse. And this largely comes through heavy metal’s larger presence. Though the production is denatured and vocals are closer to banshee cries, Spectral Wound extend a branch to older heavy metal and rock and roll musicians in spirit, if not in sound. It’s the straightforward elation that comes from Motörhead. Only, it’s amplified by black metal’s raw power.
In the most textbook definition, Songs of Blood and Mire rocks. It can be enjoyed as a rocking record without demeaning its deeper insights. Conviction in black metal is a core tenant, but chasing it down to try and pin it is a fool’s errand. The beauty of Spectral Wound is that there’s as much enjoyment at taking their music at face value–observing how that simple four-by-four drumbeat on “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” accomplishes more by doing less–as there is in discussing the song’s philosophical merits. In some words, Spectral Wound capture the pleasure and mayhem of drunkenness while not being totally divorced from a cerebral and analytic appreciation of the wine. In other words, “Black metal can be very cerebral, esoteric, and philosophical, but it can also be very dumb and gratifying for its dumbness.“
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Songs of Blood and Mire is out on August 23 via Profound Lore.
