Artist: Spectral Torture
Country: USA
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital Demo
Year: 2025
Together with this new ‘Reflections Under The Stench Of Resentment’, Spectral Torture, one of the many musical endeavours of E.X. (also known for his work in Drape, EJXA and Black Blood of the Ahrimanic Chamber), has released an exact handful of short-players. Yet, the difference this time is that this 2-track demo is the prelude of what is to become the project’s debut full-length album. Not entirely sure whether this is just testing the waters with some ideas or that these songs are just advance tracks of that expected debut. Regardless of its exact purpose and destiny, this short 7-minute demos gives you just what you might expect by spending a few second looking at its cover.
Anyone old enough to have lived through the Black Metal tape trading days, or those who cared (or dared) to dig deep enough, will share the same sense of nostalgia staring at that grainy front cover. A blurry and vague image of a corpse painted guy sitting on a grave at night in total solitude, it doesn’t get more “true”. However, imagery isn’t everything, as those avidly trading these tapes also might remember…
In case you haven’t stumbled upon Spectral Torture before and this is your starting point, then you are in for a treat. At least, if you share the same affinity of those charming mid- to late 90’s. Cloaked in a mandatory crude sound, E.X. is giving you some stunningly good Raw Black Metal, that indeed harkens back to the heydays of such bands as Moonblood, Judas Iscariot and the first Satanic Warmaster album. It bears as much melancholy as a profound melodicism. Those melodies, however, are expertly tucked away under the surface of its harsh production, but with a few spins, the music slowly unfolds and it shows you how beautiful Raw Black Metal can be – even now, some 25 or 30 years later.
