It's not often that one comes across an album as tuneless or discordant as Savaging Spires' self-titled debut. This folky collection of eerie, chaotic noise for the most part sounds like a load of kids let loose in the school's music room.
Stuff like When The Devil Says He's Dead don't just have unsettling titles, they sound unsettling too - rather apt for the Halloween season, but definitely not something you'd put on in polite company.
The tracks focus around spidery, trembling acoustic guitar; genuinely chilling stuff that conjures up horror movie images of the unwitting characters walking to their doom, stumbling into a cobweb-bedecked house before being chopped up by a crazed witch.
The vocals are equally haunting, taking on hymn-like overtones - the album feels almost like lounge music for the undead at times.
As much as you try to seek out moments of... well, anything in the album, they remain elusive. Just as a promising vocal line looks like it might be about to raise its head, it's soon lost in the quivering melange of nothingness.
Savaging Spires remains impenetrable - there are no tunes, no songs, only the noises your house makes at night. If there's any saving grace to the record, it's in Photographic Memory, where the music box-like twinkle makes for a more upbeat moment. But it's a rare glimpse of anything worthwhile.
No, by the end of the album the mind has switched off entirely, the tracks blending away into a stream of bleak abandon. Like a man delicately prodding a guitar and seeing what noise comes out of it, Savaging Spires is a true shapeless entity.
Savaging Spires is released on the 21st November.
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