Speculative Metal vs. Spectral Metal

Speculative Metal is a website where we are going to dissect the current state of Metal as a musical style.

After decades of evolution, statism and involution, we will focus on the bands that in our opinion are developing ideas that can be the bases of the future of the style. Our idea is to open a crack in space-time and peer into the future to see what the Shape-of-Metal-To-Come (SMC) will be like.

To do this, we will make a distinction between the two types of metal that are currently practiced: Spectral Metal and Speculative Metal.

Spectral Metal includes all the bands that practice a style of metal that looks to the past and that does not aim to innovate but rather pay tribute to the great bands of the period of development of the style (let's put the period 1970-2000 as deadlines) . This type of bands (whether its style is heavy, thrash, death, black, grind, doom, etc.) composes a type of metal where the main incentive is to practice conservative metal in the sense that it does not seek novelty in its proposal. 

Speculative Metal includes bands that look forward and do not repeat the formulas already brought to mastery by the great bands of the genre. They play metal that pays tribute to classic bands not by copying their sound, their ideas or their aesthetics but rather by being inspired by their innovative attitude, of wanting to take metal further, to unexplored regions, to go through unknown paths for the style.


We will carry out cartographic work here, that is, we will create a map of the current state of the bands that contribute to Speculative Metal that will serve as a guide for those who want to delve into the unknown and thus be able to fulfill the primary intention of metal that has been present since its inception: to find a border and tear it down to continue delving deeper into the stylistic and conceptual spiral of style.

To describe Speculative Metal we will use a terminology with certain novelties since musical criticism has been stagnant for years for the most part and impede us from analyzing exactly what is happening in the style from 1995-2000 onwards.

Quoting the cult grimoire Liber Semitarum (The Book of Ways) by Relgneps Razalas:

"Speculative Metal bands are carriers and their function is to multiply the perspectives and fragments within the discursive capacity of Metal as a style." (L.S., Part I, chap. II - 1, Physiognomics and systematics)

The words Speculative and Spectral have not been chosen at random. This table is taken from the section "Comparative morphological tables" of the Liber Semitarum:


SPECULATIVE METAL                             vs.

         SPECTRAL METAL

                                           Specere: observe, look (common root)

Speculum (mirror, contemplation)

        Spectrum (simulation, image, ghost)

Speculator ((in ancient wars it was the explorer, the one who did intelligence work)


Speculativus (contemplative or theoretical)


Speculari (he who observes from above, from a watchtower)

(L.S., Introduction)




The common root of both terms is specere, which in Latin means to observe, to look. Spectral, for its part, comes from spectrum (simulation, image, ghost) since the bands that practice this style are a mere image that reflects what already existed, the style of classic bands, repeating with greater or lesser success a formula which was already practiced successfully years ago. They act like a ghost since in a certain sense it is a dead metal, which does not advance but has its eyes set on that glorious past and is not interested in changing anything about it. They are a simulacrum, an image made in the likeness of another, a mere shadow.

On the other hand, Speculative comes from speculum, it reflects the mirror image; but this image is different from the original since it is associated with an idea of contemplation, of reflection, of wanting to go further, as the speculatur did in ancient battles, the explorer; or the speculari, the one who looks from above... which in both cases leads to a work of contemplative reflection that leads to a new theory, something new, the speculative.

As the great Inat-se-Ragen wrote:

"Metal will come even if it is not called

In the end, it will appear and display

And it will be different, since it is Metal"

(Metallicum Proverbia, verse 34)

​

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