At a gig the other day, they played Ghost over the PA while we were waiting for the band to come out.
Their popularity amazes me, honestly. If it wasn’t for the back story, would anyone care? Warmed-over Mercyful Fate? Surely, more than half a century since Black Sabbath invented heavy metal a few miles from where I’m sitting, we deserve better than that.
Spell certainly think so.
“Heavy metal can often be a regressive genre, almost by definition. But it doesn’t have to be!” emphasises the band’s singer, bassist and co-pilot Cam Mesmer, and that feels like the whole point of “Wretched Heart”, their fifth album. This is not metal as heritage industry. This is metal as something alive, strange, occult, melodic and just dangerous enough.
“Dark Inertia” is almost perfect occultist metal. It has the atmosphere, the menace, the sense that the candles have been lit and something is about to happen. “Lilac” follows with melodies that feel almost timeless, and maybe that is because heavy metal itself will never die. The organ gives it a real melodic gravitas too, like the whole thing has been dragged out of some cathedral crypt.
“Take My Life” is where the drums, riffs and solos really start to underline the quality of all this. It grooves as well, and that matters, because Spell never sound like they are ticking boxes. They understand that classic metal was never just about power. It was about movement, drama and feel.
“Unquiet Graves” is so 80s it would be wearing shoulder pads, but not in some cheap retro way. The keys take this, and plenty of the others, into places you might not be expecting. That is one of the record’s real strengths. Mesmer, Al Lester, Jeff Black and Gabriel Tenebrae have made something that understands the past without being trapped in it.
“Oubliette” has a stadium-shaking swagger that many a power metal band would be proud of, while “Iron Teeth” has that sense of fun that the best metal always had. You can almost see the hair swinging as the solo plays. “Exquisite Corpse” polishes everything until it shines, but there is violence in the lyrics too, and that tension between elegance and threat is where Spell really live.
“Savage Scourge” pushes harder, before “In Duress” brings a prog feel as an interlude, a brief moment to gather yourself before the title track arrives. “Wretched Heart” is suitably grand, suitably dramatic, and when they sing “my shame is cast off”, it feels like a declaration rather than just a line.
“Wretched Heart” is the sound of metal that people who don’t like metal think it sounds like.
Those of us that have grown up with it can spot masters at work.
Let them cast a spell.
Rating 8.5/10
