Band: The Spektrum
Title: Regret Of The Gods
Label: NoiseHead Records
Distribution: NoiseHead Records
Release date: April 8th 2011
Review: CD

The Spektrum are a Portuguese trio (vocalist Dyrion, bass player / drummer / keyboardist Zouza, and guitarist / keyboard player / drummer Engraved) that entered, consciously, the Endarker Studio with Marduk’s Magnus ‘Devo’ Andersson, who mixed, recorded and mastered this full length. Their studio recording Regret Of The Gods brings more than an hour of slightly symphonic and bombastic Black / Death Metal with a lot of variety in tempo, melody and structure. Each composition differs in speed, including lots of tempo-changes and breaks, and almost all of them consist of acoustic and / or keyboard-driven and / or soundscape-alike intermezzos, intros and outros. There’s room for each individual instrument (vocals included), nicely balanced and mixed, fitting well to the massive and colossal production. I can hardly detect any Thrash-influence, even though the band once started as a Thrash-formation (initially without permanent keyboards) – a riff, from time to time, refers to the earliest years, yet that’s it, as a matter of fact.
Seen from an open-minded vision, The Spektrum can be compared to acts like Vesania, Dimmu Borgir, early Moonspell or Nahemah, yet this trio does not get seduced to plagiarism. Musically seen, they do add lots of specific, ‘own’ elements, and the lyrics deal with the contrast between humans and their god(s), seen from a rather introspective point of view. Yet overall it is ridiculous to say this material is renewing, because it certainly is not. And what’s more, this album really sounds catchy and from time to time pretty limpid. More than once, however, Regret Of The Gods consists of sublime excerpts, making the few predictable ones of lesser importance, and the nicely constructed songs and skilled performance make this album recommended to fans of higher mentioned bands.

85/100

Ivan Tibos.