By: Rich Buley
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Released on February 23, 2015 via Sonic Cathedral
Having spent all of my teenage years in North Devon, the perfect antithesis of an alternative music hotbed (unless you count third rate Status Quo and UB40 covers bands), I am better placed than most to identify with the apparent need of Spectres to break out from the strangulating uniformity and overwhelming antiquity that surrounded them in their home town of Barnstaple, relocate to Bristol, and go for the bloody sonic jugular.
This is not before they ended up, when starting up, at the bottom of 3 band bills with Stated Quotient and BU40 (?) in the pubs of Barnstaple, and presumably scared the living daylights out of most of the pub’s occupants with a fearsome, snarling wall of noise. Oh, how I wish I had seen that. Prescriptions for tinnitus aid went up 4 fold in the local chemist, whilst gig opportunities began to dwindle.
So came the relocation and initially, without the benefit of local insight or knowledge, Spectres were again lumped in to play Bristol venues with bands they had nothing in common with, to an audience that simply had no time for My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth or any other kind of blistering musical assault on the senses.
Just as Bristol looked as though it might be going the way of Barnstaple, our intrepid four (Joe Hatt, Guitar & Vocals, Darren Frost, Bass & Vocals, Adrian Dutt, Guitar, and Andy Came, Drums) landed a gig at The Louisiana with some like-minded noiseniks, which gave them some much needed positive feedback, and the confidence to go it alone.
Spectres created their own local scene through the birth of Howling Owl records, which as well as being a vehicle to release their music, also saw local artists such as Oliver Wilde and Towns release albums. Suddenly, the alternative music world began to hear their unholy roar, and none other than Nathaniel Cramp, Shoegazing gentleman of some standing, snapped them up for his very successful Sonic Cathedral imprint. Cue a generous round of applause for the way in which Spectres battled against all the odds, with sheer bloody-mindedness and absolutely no compromise (when the bottles started flying they would just play louder), to achieve their goals.
Dying, the debut album, has arrived, and to perhaps ensure potential listeners are not likely to go the same way of the half-deafened inhabitants of Barnstaple, the grotesque, macabre album cover and reasonably unambiguous album title are entirely representative of the sounds and themes that lie beneath. Although the inclusion of an Ouija Board with physical copies of the long player is perhaps taking things a little far…
‘Drag’ begins proceedings and is one and a half minutes of unsettling white noise, the type normally reserved for grisly scenes in horror films, before ‘Where Flies Sleep’ positively erupts out of the speakers with the same level of ferocity as the middle section of MBV’s recorded version of ‘You Made Me Realise’ (later to become the 20 minute ‘Holocaust’ section at live shows). The band hold back just enough to allow Hatt to begin to deliver his own lyrical catharsis, before accelerating into a dramatic, thunderous conclusion. As abrasive starts go, it’s absolutely phenomenal.
Former single ‘The Sky Of All Places’ begins in the same territory as a lot of the last Hookworms album, with a tight, motorik beat, skeletal riff and wandering bassline just about holding off a gathering storm, before those heavy showers of distortion gleefully announce their arrival.
Spectres sound claustrophobic, multi-layered and sometimes virtually impenetrable, but it is the regular glimpses of song writing craft and melody that will drag you in for more. ‘Family’ is a case in point, with its emotive, harmonious chorus informing you that “Addiction runs through my family, and I’m wondering when it’s coming for me”. Obviously your head is caved in shortly afterwards by one million contaminated guitars, but at least it temporarily offered some semblance of beauty in a world of despair, decay and death.
The centrepiece of the album, ‘This Purgatory’, rightly dispenses with all that easy listening stuff, as Spectres drag us, backwards and screaming, into an insect laden pit of insomnia and anguish, where only crepuscular, discordant sounds reside.
The cacophony continues with ‘Mirror’, the most unhinged and violent sounding song on the album, and containing some of the most industrial, teeth-grinding noise sections you are likely to hear this year, before ‘Blood In The Cups’ whirs into slow motion and again displays why Spectres are regarded as such a fearsome proposition live, with the guitars, if possible, reaching a higher level of brutality still.
‘Sink’, with its colossal, buzzsaw punk, is an out and out, in-your-face rocker, while ‘Lump’ prefers irregular drum pattern, squealing feedback and sudden changes of pace to deliver its unnerving payload.
And finally, there is nine minute closer ‘Sea of Trees’, a haunting, goth-flecked number that is blown into pieces in the middle by a 3 minute, percussion-less onslaught of filthy, furious noise.
Dying is the name of the album but very rarely has a debut sounded so alive and uncompromising. Just be sure that you don’t mistake the life you can hear for the overwhelming infestation of scuttling cockroaches.
