Album Review :: Spectres :: Hunger

Spectres

Hunger (Howling Owl Records)

March 11 2013

7/10

Words: David Beech

Being described by Artrocker magazine as a “tornado tearing through a nail factory” while their Facebook bio simply states 'We are loud', Bristol-based four-piece Spectres are making music without compromise. Blending sheer abrasive walls of noise with ephemeral vocals that glide above the face-melting evisceration beneath them, seemingly unfazed. Their sophomore EP entitled 'Hunger' is a step in a more experimental direction after 2011's 'Family' and sees the dichotomy of understated vocals and balls to the wall noise really come to fruition.

The first fully realised track on the album (discounting the 45 second introductory 'Pull') is 'Rattle the Cage'. At it's basest form, this is a traditional rock song. However, add the countless layers of texture, the swirling monolithic white noise, the almost-incomprehensible drums and you have so much more. As with the EP as a whole, there are slower moments here in which the feedback takes a back-seat. Here vocalists Hatt and Frost ask “if you ever feel hunger?” in a slow mournful drawl, before the inevitable happens and the song finishes in a cataclysmic climax of drums, drawls and sheer disregard for their own, or their fans, ears.

'I Was In A Box' starts with some highly atmospheric feedback before launching in to a full frontal aural assault. The song glides and bombs through the course of it's seven minutes but is constantly driven forward by a drum track that merges brilliantly with the periods of intense noise before asserting itself more clearly in rarer melodic instances.

Final track 'Threshing Machine' is just that. It starts of slow and ominous, with some excellent symbols from drummer Andy Came. By two minutes the song has hacked and torn apart any semblance of melody and focuses instead on cranking the amps to 11. Of course, like the songs it proceeds, 'Threshing Machine' has moments of melodic clarity, but before long they're once again stripped away in favour of the stomach churning noise that defines the record. And it's all the better for it.

What's obvious from the get go, is Spectres will undoubtedly have more than their fair share of detractors and they're definitely not a band for everyone. However those with a bit more stomach to them should listen to this EP, three, four even five times before they pass judgement. What they'll find is a record that stretches the band's dynamics to breaking point. There are moments of brief respite littered throughout the course of the five tracks that serve to lull listeners in to a false sense of security before their teeth are shattered and their ears made to bleed by the power, the ferocity and ultimately the talent that went in to making the 'Hunger' EP.