Spectral Lore / Locust Leaves – Split (2012)

Keeping busy this 2012, the one man project Spectral Lore delivers another excellent Black Metal release with their split album with fellow Greeks Locust Leaves. Continuing with their highly refined brand of music presented in their latest full-length “Sentinel”, they deliver a crushing 15-minute track that covers half of this excellently packaged release on Order of Theta Records.

Immediately delivering their aural assault, Spectral Lore opens the split release with a crushing track titled “Duty”. For the span of fifteen minutes the band’s excellent guitar work gives us that Primordial vibe, but with a heavier Black Metal orientation. The singing is as brutal as ever, but it’s the small details the song structure that makes this track engaging. With a several tempo changes, epic atmospheric keyboards, and a pulsating bass guitar line, the band shows again their strength in crafting restless tracks that are very diverse and engaging.

The next track, “Promise”, is presented by another enigmatic Greek band named Locust Leaves. This song focuses less on the atmospheric/ambient side of things, but they also carve beautiful melodic passages into their very aggressive music that nicely change the tracks pace and direction for a few moments. Comparable to Wolves In The Throne Room and similar bands, Locust Leaves delivers quite a solid track that has nicely grows and culminates in a very satisfactory and eerie manner. We particularly love the clean vocals used on one of the melodic passages these track puts forth.

Showing that Greek bands can be highly competitive in the realms of ‘intelligent’ Black Metal, this two-song EP delivers 27 minutes of excellent music that should not be discarded or taken lightly. If you like your Black Metal to have more layers and be above average, this slip album should definitely be in your collection. Limited to 300 machine printed copies and packaged in an excellent white cardboard-like case, this should be a highly sought collector’s item when these two bands start getting the recognition they deserve.

Release: July 19th, 2012

Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal

Country: Greece