If you think of Circle of Ouroborus meeting Stormcrowfleet and Anaal Nathrakh of The Codex Necro, you get the beginning of the picture that is this wonder slab of creepy-crawly messed-up sickness. Toss in the early Burzum or Emperor and mix with sheer strangeness and lots of despair, and you have a winner. Near Death Experience also comes packaged with a video playable on the computer that further "illustrates" the band's trademark insanity. Highly recommended if you have the stomach.
With the release of their second album, “The Near Death Experience”, this two-member band are bound to excite, confuse but ultimately impress any fan of the unusual. Surely black metal in nature, Spektr combine sounds unlike any other. It’s a harsh, disturbing, raw in all matter of sense, but one that is still highly complex and sophisticated within a low-fi environment. Much like friends and label mates Blut Aus Nord, Spektr buck all musical notions. Formed in 2000, Spektr is a studio project that takes inspiration from sources that range from extreme to bizarre. Their music is a voyage through an apocalyptic field littered with torn fragments of Bathory, Neurosis, Khold, Emperor, Swans and more. The second studio album from an extremely mysterious french duo. This is one of those albums that require complete attention and a very dark mood to really absorb and understand them. Spektr plays experimental kind of black metal, featuring strong influences from industrial and dark ambient.
I don't know about you but I find this album to be the most frightening black metal album I've ever heard. Not in the sense that it is horror-movie scary or that there are blood-curdling screams by babies or anything like that. What I mean is the mood of the music and atmosphere created. Let me just put it this way...this album is not really the kind of album that you would throw into your CD player on the drive to work. It requires complete attention and a very dark mood to really absorb it and understand it.
Who would of guessed that a black metal band from Paris, France, of all places, could convince me that black metal still lives. The guitars are the classic black metal style, concussive drums with a hollow sound that makes you feel like you are all alone in a forest that covers the Earth. No place to go, no way out. The vocals are the usual raspy harshness of any black metal album, but they have a feeling of urgency and desperation (it reminds me a lot of Horna's Aania Yossa; talk about desperate, pain-filled vocals). The sampling is done amazingly; adding that final touch of atmosphere that takes you song-by-song through this album without a pause. Unlike a horror movie, filled with breaks to give you a breather from one scary moment to the next and a feeling that everything is going to be alright, Spektr NEVER lets up. You have no chance for "calm;" no chance to breathe easy knowing that this world you are experiencing is not real. Don't get me wrong, there are slower moving parts and tracks that are mostly eerie sampling, but they aren't the kind of slow tracks that relax you.A truly uncomfortable feeling all the way around in this album. It's really quite unsettling.
To give you a song-by-song review would be stupid here. The album, as a whole, must be experienced to really get the mood and atmosphere created by Spektr. If you jump from track to track, it really doesn't make sense, you have to take it all in (it's just like jumping around on a concept album; you have no idea what the fuck is going on in the story). Overall, an amazing album and if the mood hits you just right (it worked for me first spin), you'll be looking over your shoulder and anxiously tossing around in your seat like it's the most uncomfortable thing you've ever sat in.
Official promo video:
Sample:
