Condition

The follow-up to Spectres' acclaimed 2015 debut Dying (SCR 090B-LP/090CD), Condition was recorded by Dominic Mitchison and mastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road in London. It's louder and more abrasive than their debut, but also a real progression. It sounds huge and adds a genuinely innovative and confrontational edge. "There were discussions about experimenting with electronics, but the idea soon petered out when we realized we still wanted to experiment with guitars," reveals singer and guitarist Joe Hatt. As a result tracks such as "End Waltz" have a relentlessly pounding, almost techno structure, in contrast to the kinetosis-inducing dirge of "Dissolve". Elsewhere, the almost restrained (by Spectres' standards) white noise and wordplay of "A Fish Called Wanda" and the sprawling "Colour Me Out" are counterbalanced by brutal assaults such as "Neck" and "Welcoming The Flowers". "On this album we became even less interested in actually playing guitar," explains Hatt, "which meant that we got more into experimenting with the sounds we could get out of them when brutalizing them and letting the feedback do the talking."