Spectre Horsemen, Pale With Dust - Odes to Ends I Part A

Released: May 1

Odes to Ends I Part A marks the third full-length release and the first part of a two-part series from Spectre Horsemen, Pale With Dust. As the title might suggest, the album is rife with deeply apocalyptic themes, some that borrow heavily from religious imagery and some which are grounded in a bit more realistic themes. Along with the heavy themes, the album covers quite a bit of ground genre-wise but centers itself around dark ambient and drone with a neo-classical layer on top of it for a certain cinematic cohesiveness. The opener for the album takes these classical notes mainly in the first minute or so as it opens up with tense percussion and detuned horns, building a layer of suspense that suddenly breaks and morphs into a rather uncomfortable drone piece comprised of ghostly string layers.  

In some of the pieces here, weird juxtapositions are what create the disturbing atmospheres. For instance, on "War!" the musical backing is surprisingly slow, simple, and rather morose. But this simple composition is combined with all the sounds of war to include screams, gunfire, sirens, and the like to make something that is ghastly and scary. It's not quite what I expected when I saw the song title, but it somehow feels more appropriate that what I imagined. This track is followed by "Holding Through Fear," which builds up a remarkable bit of tension through its heavy percussion and a strange repeating sound resembling a large power drill. It feels genuinely horror movie-esque, one of the more modern ones that seem to have a penchant for torture. 

The album ends with two tracks that seem different but work together well with the first being the nasty noise wall inflected "Global Chemical Annihilation." The noise elements are scathing and brutal but they are interestingly tamped down by the use of an oddly organ-like synth. It repeats and melds into other sounds until the very end as the searing noises around it quickly die off and the melody is played by what sounds like one lonely violin. This takes us into the final track, "The Central Reservations Are Full of Bodies." It is a long drone like track with a persistent layer of low static noise that accompanies morose strings playing a dirge. It projects an image of the aftermath, the absolute wasteland that sits before us once the end is over. It makes for a poignant end to the album, but also makes me wonder where it will go for the second part.