Skeletal Spectre from Sweden were formed about five years ago by someone called Behold The Pentagram. After the band signed to Razorback Recordings, the act released the fabulous debut album Tomb Coven. The album was followed by Occult Spawned Premonitions, also done via Razorback as well as Selfmadegod Records. At the very end of 2011, Skeletal Spectre did a split 7”EP with Druid Lord by the way, and the band started working on the third album too, which was actually finished in 2012. Behold The Pentagram (bass and guitars), female grunter Vanessa Nocera, also known from American acts like Wooden Stake, Howling, Loathsome or Scaremaker, and drummer Haunting The Beyond entered the Morbid Apparition Studio, and mix + mastering of Voodoo Dawn were taken care of by Patrick ‘Crypticus’ Bruss (think: Megascavenger, Impetigo, Cianide, Acid Witch, Ribspreader etc.). Earlier this year, the trio signed to Pulverised, with this full release as first result.
For the better part, Voodoo Dawn goes on in the vein of the former stuff, but the whole has mainly got rid of the original traditionalised Doom-elements from old (cf. anything in between Celtic Frost, Black Sabbath, Candlemass and Paradise Lost). The album brings a raw and rough, almost sludgy form of heavy and brutal yet melodious (Doom) Death with massive rhythms, majestic leads, deep grunts and shrieking screams, and pounding riffs. The sound is raspy yet adorably well-fitting to the compositions, and the whole breaths an atmosphere of contaminated sickness. In a certain way, many parts sound catchy / catching, but not of an infantile or modernised kind. More than before, Voodoo Dawn sort of is a perfectly-balanced symbiosis of both the North American and Swedish scenes. …the Old Skool stuff, for sure… Main problem, however: there are no songs on this recording that grab you, and Voodoo Dawn somewhat leaves me unsatisfied…
Imagine a vicious but melodic mixture of Edge Of Sanity, Decrepitaph, Nihilist / Entombed, Necrophagia, Dismember, Paganizer and Autopsy and you might have a clue what this material stands for, musically…