Band:	Dead Neanderthals
Album:	Specters
Style:	Drone, Free Jazz
Release date:	August 2023

01. Necrology
02. Banishment

At this point it's weird to think that I once thought of Dead Neanderthals as a primarily free jazz band, considering how much of their DNA is drone metal now. Even weirder to see them become so engaging through a temporary extended lineup.

The duo kinda started out as a free jazz outfit, one whose loud and spastic leanings on albums like Polaris or Worship The Sun felt like they took a bit from a grinder punk jazz akin to Painkiller, but a drone component of the sound became more visible especially around 2017, with the band delving into genres like experimental rock, ambient, krautrock, and just pure drone, including a collaboration with a band that literally had "drone" in its name, namely Sly & The Family Drone. Over time it became clear that these were more than detours and the versatility of the sound also meant that it was harder to create a clear identity of what Dead Neanderthals are musically. With albums like Blood Rite (review here) and Metal (review here) incorporating metal both musically and aesthetically, it wasn't clear how much metal would remain a part of the duo's identity.

Specters isn't really a metal album. It is heavy and it has a drone metal and post metal edge, but it doesn't feel like it prioritizes heaviness in the same way that their more overtly metal stuff did. It is closer both sound-wise and lineup-wise to another album in their catalog, 2019's Ghosts, both of which being sort of collaborative albums, with Skeletonwitch's Scott Hedrick providing guitars and synths. So, in a way, one may consider Specters as a continuation of that album, but also feels a bit like it's own thing because of how much more chemistry it feels like the three folks involved have on this record comparatively.

With two long pieces that are very very focused on repetition, a lot of the heavy lifting on how engaging this is lies on the soundscapes and on their slow evolution through repetition. I've already mentioned a heaviness in them, but it's more of a very heavy post-rock than just metal on "Necrology", and that post-rock feeling is enhanced by how the guitars, drums, and synths interact with one another and build in something that does resemble crescendocore quite a bit, and with a very ethereal feeling to all of it. "Banishment" is where the metal side of things is really in full swing, with the guitar riffs that open the song contrasting in loudness and fuzz to how ethereal they sounded on the previous track. Otto Kokke is credited with just synths instead of saxophones, but a lot of the sounds on "Banishment" do resemble saxophones, so I wonder if that's a mistake in crediting or if it's just synth sounds resembling saxophones; whichever the case, they do add a lot to the soundscape.

I think expanding the lineup here with even just one person made Specters quite engaging, because the drums would often be the most repetitive of the three, serving as a very reliable skeleton, upon which there are now two elements, the guitars and the synths, which can take turns between sustaining the mood through repetition, and bringing the sound forward through changes. And that's what makes Specters more engaging than the other albums by this band that I reviewed simply because Specters relies more on change than just cool metallic soundscapes. I doubt Hedrick will join as a full-time member of the band, but it would be great to see Dead Neanderthals navigate the limitations of a duo playing drone music.