Review: Spiine – Tetraptych

Style: funeral doom metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: old Swallow the Sun, Bell Witch, Mournful Congregation, Ahab
Country: Australia
Release date: 27 March 2025

Ah, the relief of spring. After ninety days of frigid grey skies and bundling up, at last I can go outside and frolic in the flowers, cavort with the baby animals—a breath of fresh air. This is not so for Spiine, however, since they’re from down unda. Late March heralds autumn in Australia, and all the white women flock to their local Starbucks for a PSL. It’s a grim time with cloudy skies, frigid winds, and trees partaking in their annual mass dying ritual (never mind that I’m sure Australia is quite lovely in the Fall). Tetraptych is fitting for that mood and is, in a word, bleak. Vocalist Xenoyr (ex¹–Ne Obliviscaris) and guitarist Sesca Scaarba (Virgin Black) have been working on Tetraptych for several years now, and while their debut under the Spiine moniker isn’t quite right for this time of year in the northern hemisphere, its funereal meanderings are masterful, nonetheless. 

In four monolithic funeral doom tracks (a tetraptych of them, if you will), the duo exude misery and pain. The album is monochromatically grey; it’s not hopeful for a second. Tetraptych is a threnody to human happiness. Playing into funeral doom stereotypes, the album’s pace is glacial, occasionally hastened for moments of blackened tremolos like at the end of opener “Myroblysiia” and closer “Wriithe”; but otherwise, be prepared to suffocate in overwhelming misery. The guitars’ weepy riffs have fantastic tone, hearkening back to funeral doom legends like Esoteric, Evoken, and Colosseum while also keeping Scaarba’s gothic, Virgin Black styles intact. At times the album is heartbreakingly gorgeous in the way a wilted flower is beautiful (see the strings and choirs around 4:00 in “Oubliiete”). Tetraptych can even convey feelings of fragility; each track ebbs and flows between crushing doom sections and stripped back, minimalist soundscapes. These can manifest as an isolated guitar part, choral intro, simply Xen’s vocals with a whispered intensity, or delicately arranged strings.

Xenoyr’s vocals, however, extinguish any sustained notion of brittleness. Even though humans are shattered easily, misery is omnipresent and inescapable. Desolation and death are inevitable, and so are Xenoyr’s deep growls and raspy highs. With his characteristic darkly poetic lyrics full of allusion and a thesaurus’s worth of stellar vocubalury, the vocal attack and subject matter (of pain and torment) match the sunless music perfectly. Although almost exclusively alternating between growls and highs—aside from the start of “Wriithe” which has him groaning and croaking ominously and is rather haunting—Xen does fall into a pattern of repetition at times. In the context of four quarter-hour tracks, this limited range succeeds at making the album seem incredibly dense and singular in mood, but I would have preferred that Spiine compose with more of the choral elements in addition to Xen’s harshes. 

The lack of variety extends beyond Xen’s vocals, however, with 90% of Tetraptych dwelling in moody gloom and painfully slow distorted riffs. The only moments which demand attention are the blackened sections and the Mournful Congregation-esque guitar leads, and the rest becomes a bit of foggy, slow-burning blur². At over an hour, the repetition gets to me, unfortunately. But maybe that’s because it’s sunny today for the first time in months and I’ve finally got some vitamin D. I’ll be sure to return to Tetraptych on a stormy winter eve and wallow in the sadness as was intended. 

I’ve waited several years for this project to materialize and seen countless updates from Xen about how he was practicing sounding miserable, yet I was still unprepared for how crushing Spiine would be. If you wish to embark on a “pilgrimage through human suffering,”³ Tetraptych is the perfect soundtrack. You will be miserable and you will like it.

Recommended tracks: Myroblysiia, Wriithe
You may also like: Virgin Black, Evoken, Esoteric, Frowning, Colosseum, Déhà
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Spiine is:
LINE-UP:
Sesca Scaarba: Guitars & Orchestration
Xen: Vocals

With:
Session drums by Waltteri Väyrynen
Session bass by Lena Abé
Orchestration editing by Grigoriy Losenkov
Choirs by The Choir That Never Was
Vocals recorded by Xen
Guitars recorded by Sesca

1. I am still grieving this btw. The album is fitting as you will soon read. ↩︎
2. Don’t you dare comment “yOu JuSt dOn’T uNDeRsTaNd FuNErAl DoOm.” I know this is a prog blog, but I know and love as much funeral doom as anybody. ↩︎
3. Credit to their Bandcamp for that one. ↩︎