### Skeletal Spectre: Tomb coven

#### 11/03/10 || Khlysty

You have no fucking right NOT to love Skeletal Spectre. Even if you’re a closet metalhead, you just HAVE to adore these crazy-ass Swedes and their dementia-inducing take on death metal. Fuck, even if you’re an ardent fan of Susan Boyle, you cannot but LIKE them boys and have “Tomb Coven” as closely to your heart as possible. Why? I’ll fucking tell you why! ‘Cause it’s one of these infectiously fun-FUN-FUN records that manage to combine all the proper elements from death, crust and doom in JUST THE RIGHT WAY, to make a record that’ll have you smile maniacally, even when it rips your face off.

Sporting fantastic aliases (Behold The Pentagram??? Sacrifice The Virgin??? Haunting The Beyond??? Color me speechless…), this trio takes its musical cues from death metal’s best origins (one can literally FEEL the chunky warmth of Sunlight Studios just oozing from the –digital- grooves of the record) and combines them with the grime and fury of old-skool crusty hardcore and with doom’s most moshing-friendly parts, to play songs that are groovy, headbang-worthy, fun to listen to and heavier than all-fuck. If one wants some comparison, imagine Coffins and Entombed gangfucking each other, while retaining their basic bestial power and heavosity and one won’t be off the mark.

The production, although dirty and ugly, seems completely organic and creates a sense of suffocating, oily downtuned heaviness, from which the mid-range growls and gargles that pass for vocals rare their monstrous head. The guitar-bass interplay is fucking fantasmo, laying down the vicious groove of the songs, the drumming is simple and done with caveman force and the more high-pitched guitar leads and phrasing add a sense of desperation, rarely found in modern death metal. Most of the songs are slow-to-mid-paced and move within the two-and-a-half-to-five-minutes range, without ever becoming redundant or interchangeable.

And, well, here lies the genius of Skeletal Spectre: although one can easily discern their roots and influences (early death/doom with a dash of hardcore mentality, here and there), the final product sounds so fresh and exciting that one cannot but admire them boys for their inventive use of known raw material and unwavering dedication to heavosity and the mighty groove. I won’t go into more details, since the bottom line here is simple: you like metal? You like Skeletal Spectre. You don’t like ‘em? Then, whaddafuck you’re doing here in the first place?

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Razorback Recordings
- Website: Skeletal Spectre MySpace
- Band
- Behold the Pentagram: bass, vocals
- Sacrifice the Virgin: guitar
- Haunting the Beyond: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The decapitress
- 02. Amulet of impurity
- 03. Wrath of corrupta
- 04. Burial ground
- 05. Cursed ancestry
- 06. Tomb coven
- 07. Eerie bones