Once again, we’ll delve into the depths of the South American underground. In this case, we’ll dissect a work by Spiritum, a band that’s only been around for four damn years. Its ranks include mutants from Blasfemia Ceremonia and a former member who played live with the legendary Illapa. To date, they’ve only released two demos, including the one that will be desecrated today.
The demo opens its jaws with an introduction that goes in a crescendo of threatening darkness, giving the sensation that some demonic entity is approaching, or rather, that the listener is getting closer step by step to the infernal domains of said malevolent entity until the bells announce the beginning of the ‘Black Ceremony’ that we are about to witness. This intro reminded me a lot of the gloomy sounds evoked by Lustmord or those ancient chants of Crowley, and also of the qlippothic atmospheres that Kenneth Anger captured in his films. Once the introduction is over, blasphemy makes its presence felt, embodied in the music: Black Metal with dark voices transmuting into a painful shriek over marches with rhythms varying between speed and devilish guitars until it falls dead in a cut where the bass consumes the gloomy melody, signalling the path that will also be consumed in a slower but consistent rhythm.
The cursed track, dubbed ‘My Immortal Wings in the Valley Funebrarum’, has an instrumental prelude lasting over a minute, and when the tempo is sped up, the invocation screams ensue. It could be said that those conspiring behind the veil of Spiritum are practising the chaotic and raw sound of Black Metal, but occasionally memorable riffs emerge riding on restrained, rapid tempos with rudimentary drumming but with that syncopated hammering characteristic of the hordes on this southern side of heaven.
Track 4 has become my favourite since, after the announcement of toothpicks, a riff proudly makes its way over a mid-tempo march showing a rotten and hidden face until now, but less chaotic than the previous emanations where the screams have transformed into Black vociferations plagued with effects like the echo of forgotten aeons and in the end they become arcane praises in the void, almost 5 minutes consummated, this ‘A Call to the Illusions of Eternal Laberynth of Cosmos’.
And the work could not close in any other way than with another dose of crudeness using the same stinking, vomited ingredients, almost basking in the chaotic edges of the abyss until falling halfway through the song into a trance that is only broken by the feedback of the guitar and the damned noise that was omnipresent in an ethereal way throughout the demo, giving the recording a tint and feeling of live captures. As the seconds go by, the curses are recited with a progressive increase in speed, alternating with slow rhythms and dead tones of the guitars and the occasional drawings of the bass until decapitation!
This demo was released by the Ukrainian Depressive Illusions Records at only 66 copies on tape and by Obscure Summoning Productions at only 10 copies, but they bring the enchantments vomited on papyrus. A handcrafted delight of primitive Black Metal invoked in the mystical lands of the kingdom of the Incas.
