Review Summary: What if the real Spirit Adrift was the friends we made along the way?
With the release of their sixth album, Infinite Illuminations, Spirit Adrift has announced their end as a band. It’s the sort of announcement that I can’t deny hits a personal point, having followed them since 2017’s Curse of Conception and my old band even opening for them in 2022. But at the same time, it’s understandable when looking at the band’s overall trajectory. Much in a way similar to Cathedral’s return to morbid, mournful doom on 2013’s The Last Spire, this album reflects similar intent in coming full circle.
That sense of ending something as it began is demonstrated by the emphasis on cathartic epic doom. While Spirit Adrift had never fully abandoned those slower, rugged roots, the songs here are consistently glacial in a way that recalls The Gates of Slumber or Pale Divine on a song like “Buried In The Shadow Of The Cross.” Even when the tempo speeds up for a song like “White Death,” the faster rumble is closer to the crusty doom of Death Row-era Pentagram than Randy Rhoads worship. One can sense an emotional undercurrent as the guarded first half gradually opens up for a more determined back half.
But acknowledging the cycle at play, the execution retains the experience that the band hed acquired along the way. The ear for atmosphere seen on 2023’s Ghost At The Gallows is retained here as the opening title track swells in with the lingering western vibes before fully descending to doom. One can also say that the band could never fully lose the fighting spirit that had gotten stronger over time as the ending one-two “I Am Sustained” and “Where Once There Was An Ocean” are masterfully executed exercises of outbursting doom metal.
When so much of the discourse around a band’s farewell is focused on old guards determining when to finally quit, Spirit Adrift’s last installment caps off one of the most consistent discographies in modern doom metal. The band’s style has been tight enough over the last decade to make the shift back feel natural and the solid songwriting shows just how far they came in that time. Spirit Adrift may be gone but in light of bandleader Nate Garnett’s pending projects, there will be quite a bit to look back on.
