With underground music lore we occasionally wander down roads of questions, asking ourselves, our friends, even our enemies—”What If?”. “What if Criss Oliva was still here? What if he joined Megadeth and not Marty? How would the art be now? Would Phil Lynott like what’s happening in music (or the world) in 2025? Would Neil Peart make one more record if he didn’t get sick? Would it be good?” We cast our ruminations into the deep dark well and hear the ripples hit the stone and silence after some time.
In this futile exercise we may be left with a bittersweet melancholy knowing what titans have been laid to rest for the next thousand infinities — yet their work remains. Like a phantom spell, the wails of their guitars, cool wit of their words or the thunder of their toms explode like a conjuring the moment we turn on the proverbial Discman again. Reborn are the basslines. Reborn are the grooves that make our heads and bodies bang and shake.
Kyle McNeill, the main fixture behind Phantom Spell, may have ventured down these dusty sanctuaries and lived-in harbors before. The invocations on the latest album Heather & Hearth spill forth the Gary Mooreisms of olde, painted with Moogs of Geddy’s and cymbal work of “Doc” Wacholz. Inside the hollow of the trees burning with some mystical flame hide folky sing-along choruses that shake the roots and branches of the NWOTHM genre.
Whether in a speeding Firebird or atop the wings of an eagle high in the sky, Heather & Hearth aims to hit the heart and ear with precise polished earworm-like conviction. If you don’t sing along to this album you are simply dead. There is an affirmation in this conjuring that is clear and loud. Heavy Metal will not die. 2025 will not be its final resting ground, the pages of the chapter may be singed but as legible as ever. The melodies, the harmonies kick away the “What If’s” and secure a doorway to, however fleeting, a source for answers.
Silence weaved from words that can’t be found, / Broken by the absence of a sound, / Reaching from a darkness unexplored, / Hiding in the corners of my soul.
The album is simply pleasant to listen to. There are no sharp edges as many may yearn for in this space. But this gentleness provides a certain solace in the knowledge of its quiet, kinetic power. The record is not without its touches of bombast, but even at its loudest it’s measured, rigorous and decisive. The title track reminds me of “folk axe soldiers” Christian Neppenström and Emil Fredholm of Plankton, a band sadly caught in those futile waves of time.
The album closes with a borderline traditional ditty named “Old Pendle”, something akin to putting the smiles on the faces of Quorthon and Desmond Earley alike. So sit back, unwind, and prepare for some grins.
