Band: SPECTRALE
Country: France
Title: ▲
Label: Les Acteurs de l'Ombre
Year: 2017
Style: Acoustic Alternative Music
Review:
Many of you, like myself, know this band since the split with In Cauda Venenum and Heir out on Emanations, a LADLO chapter, in 2016, so coming from a Black Metal area, but even so Spectrale are way far from the Black Metal territory. Started as a studio project of Jeff Grimal from The Great Old Ones, Spectrale became a duo on the abovementioned split with Jean-Baptiste Poujol joining as second guitarist, and once with this debut album it seems it added a third permanent member, the cello player Raphael Verguin. Helping them in studio were a drummer, Leo Isnard from We All Die (Laughing) and The Great Old Ones, and Krys Denhez from metalcore band Jarell, with vocals on one of the tracks, actually the only one from the 9 tracks that has vocals if we don't count the ending track which has some distant tribal, shamanic-like vocal sounds enriching it. All here is based on guitars, with serious support from cells, keys and synths, drums and that's about it; to me the first two words that came to mind while and after the audition were: hypnotic and ethereal. I wouldn't know what other bands to compare their sound with, but their music is serene and mesmerizing most of the time, with a few cloudy moments, and induces a benign state of mind to the listener, I'd recommend it only in case you'd like to cleanse your mind, step out of reality and into a dreamy territory. As I said in my review of the three-way split they partecipated in, Spectrale's music is a joy, that's about it.
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: -/10