spectral wound

The true catastrophe is not that the end is nigh, but that it will never come,” says Spectral Wound, the Canadian melodic black metal quintet that speaks as one, even when on a tangent. “The day of reckoning remains, tantalizing, just beyond an ever-receding horizon. We comfort ourselves with our fears that the world is ending, but the awful banality of it is that it is not. Tomorrow will be worse.” ¶ Spectral Wound remember the original question, regarding the title of their forthcoming new full-length A Diabolic Thirst. They add, “Also, we fucking love drinking.” ¶ Out this spring on Profound Lore, A Diabolic Thirst counts six raucous and snarling hyperborean tracks of ice-clear, but blizzard-thick melodic black metal. Spectral Wound insist, “There is no formula to the writing ... Our ambitions are simple, and we have no pretensions about pushing the genre into any ‘new’ territory, or feel any need to hide our influences. At the end of the day, black metal is fucking rock and roll.” ¶ All over A Diabolic Thirst, Spectral Wound demonstrate

what they mean, but by their third full-length, they’re come to truly grasp the art of the album as a composition itself. A portion of the credit, Spectral Wound say, must go to their new bassist.

“The lineup on A Diabolic Thirst is as it was for [2018’s] Infernal Decadence, with the exception, that in the interim, we recruited a new bassist, who has added a lot to the aural landscape of the band,” the band notes. “Samuel’s playing on A Diabolic Thirst adds tension and melody, and lends to the songs a dimension of space that would not have been achievable otherwise. He is an uncommonly intentional and nuanced player, and a true maniac.”

A Diabolic Thirst jumps from the speakers upon “play” like it’s been lying in wait for another victim. Its blood- and beer-thirsty opener “Imperial Saison Noire” immediately launches into full-blown blizzard beats and fretboard fury, as if the band had been dying to rip this album from the ether and trap it to tape. Turns out, that’s exactly the case.

According to the band, they “were just preparing to enter the studio when COVID hit,” which set them back significantly. “Once it became clear that the pandemic would not soon pass, we decided we needed to move forward and embrace these new conditions of our existence. The impact on A Diabolic Thirst is a reflection of that: all of the misery and existential dread we were steeping in, the total unmooring from a sense of futurity, and a final, furious desperation.”

Before we can even ask, they conclude, “How it would sound otherwise is anyone’s guess, but it was certainly more painful and obsessive a process than our previous