Getting to Know… The Spectre Beneath | Interview 🎤

In the 360th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, musician and writer Pete Worrall answers our burning questions regarding his band, The Spectre Beneath.

“Blending heavy and turbo charged riffs with progressive tendencies, along with powerful clean vocals, dark themes, soundscapes and FX along with vivid story telling enables us to carve our own niche in the metal world.” Now that’s a mic drop moment, 🎙 The Spectre Beneath! Like our many other Getting to Know Q&As, we get the inside scoop on the UK band’s genesis, goals, musical influences, and of course, current, and future musical endeavors. 🎙 Pete Worrall, the guitarist and pianist for the collective, provides the inside scoop, answering our burning questions. So, without further ado or interview spoilers, let’s jump right into 🎤 Getting to Know… The Spectre Beneath: Interview No. 360!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes The Spectre Beneath distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

I think blending heavy and turbo charged riffs with progressive tendencies, along with powerful clean vocals, dark themes, soundscapes and FX along with vivid story telling enables us to carve our own niche in the metal world. I’m a big thrash and death metal nut so, although the vocals are clean and very melodic and catchy, it’s counterpointed with some fast and brutal riffage. As one reviewer put it, The Spectre Beneath is a fresh take on the darkly melodic and mightily progressive for a sound unlike any other band. 

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did The Spectre Beneath form and what were some of the goals or visions you had early on? 

There’s nothing too exciting to report really. Back in January 2019, I’d just finished an album with my other project, Plague and the Decay in which drummer Consta plays. When I started writing the follow up, the music seemed to be more melodic and catchy, not in an Evanescence or Within Temptation type of way, but in a Nevermore sort of way and with just the same amount of turbo charged riffs. It was a slight shift in tone and I thought it would be a good idea to add a female vocal to bring out the melodic side even more. Consta was onboard and then long time collaborator, Katy, helped write and add nuance to the vocal melodies so they would suit a female voice. I then found L Lockser from an online demo she’d posted and we managed to put our debut album, 💿 The Downfall of Judith King, in September of that year.  

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

When co-writer Katy and I got together to start writing music for The Spectre Beneath, we envisioned five albums with the fifth one being a full concept continuing the story of Sidney Stone. We had an idea of how to develop the music from album to album, how to avoid repeating the same thing album to album without losing the core sound and how we didn’t want to use the same production twice, which I feel is an easy habit to fall into. Although we’ve suffered a couple of bumps in the road over the last two and a half years, our aspirations are still to reach that five-album goal, to write the best music we can, to leave our mark in our corner of the metal world and, at the end of all that, be in a position and have the opportunity to go beyond our initial plans and push The Spectre Beneath further. 

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential? 

Initially, it was Iron Maiden. I loved the epic sound, the fact the songs weren’t just three minutes long, the lyrical content was always interesting, and the theatrics were wonderful. At the time, I used to love AC/DC and Van Halen as well, but, from a musical inspiration standpoint, I was more influenced by Iron Maiden, that was until I heard Megadeth and then things took another turn. In hindsight, I think Iron Maiden inspired me to write songs whereas Megadeth inspired me to write riffs and mix up the tried and tested song structures.  

I try and absorb as much music as I can, old and new. It’s mainly metal but not always. I do have a soft spot for Ska, swing and soundtrack music. Thanks to the recent lockdown, I got a chance to catch up on bands that were before my time, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Captain Beyond to name three. I loved them and found them a good lesson in melody, song structure and transitions and I regret not listening to them sooner. At the other end of the spectrum, I do like a bit of death metal. I’ve recently seen Ne Obliviscaris in concert in Manchester, what a show that was, a great example of riffs, progressiveness and general epic-ness. 

From a lyrical point of view, I love horror movies and dark themed stories and books, however, Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime was a huge influence due to the thematic nature of it. Our lyrics are like flash fiction in song form, we’re not great at writing real world topics and touchy-feely stuff, we like our stories.  

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative. 

I’ll forgo the one where the venue was only half full due to a big fight happening behind the venue and some guy getting his nose bitten off, something we didn’t know about until we were packing away our gear. This one was from when I was just starting out and my mates and I thought we’d hit the jackpot as we were supporting a touring band in our hometown, three bands on, if my memory serves, and we were first on and had half an hour. The bass player previously had some issues with his bass guitar in the week prior but changed the battery in it and all seemed well. Within the first number, the electrics in his bass decided to only work intermittently and at the start of the second song, they had gone completely. He disappeared stage right and came back on for the final note of the second song with a bass borrowed from the next band on. We start the third number, and he disappears again because the bass was not in conventional tuning, so he had to run off stage to tune it up. He turns up for the final few bars of the third song. The fourth song starts, it was an up-tempo rocker and we start to claw things back a little. What the bass player failed to realise is the stage we were on was quite wide, so when he came over to my side of the stage to rock out with me, he quickly found out his lead was not long enough and ended up pulling down his stack and head which clattered hard enough on the stage to remove the wooden frame of the bass head. We left the stage after that to a sympathetic ripple. He left the band shortly after because he couldn’t afford to get his bass head fixed. 

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

I’m going to cheat a little and say there are two for me. 🎵 “The Downfall of Judith King” from our debut was the first song I wrote for this venture and I had no idea it would get this far, and to have it called a behemoth of a song by one reviewer was a real treat for me. The second is 🎵 “As The Crows Peck At Your Bones”, also from our debut. It was the first song we recorded and it started off very ropey but then, after having Katy rework the melody and having a break and coming back to it, something clicked into place. I still don’t know what that moment was, it was just a feeling. I try not to analyse it too much, instead, just accept it. It was a perfect lesson in not being afraid to rework and re-write if something’s not going correctly.  

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

I like to write books and stories, horror, thrillers and whodunits mainly. I released my 5th full length novel last year and I’m about a quarter of the way through writing another whodunit. I did go to Ealing studios to study script writing and screenplays and learned a lot, but I also realised writing film scripts is too formulaic and not for me, it was too restrictive, I’m happy writing novels and short stories.  

Closing out, what is The Spectre Beneath currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

We have a mini-LP out later this year with 6 songs on it. We have the next album planned out and I would say 70% of it is written. There are some killer riffs in the mix but a few more brooding songs this time around. After two and a half years without releasing anything, we are keen to get more music out there. After releasing the mini-LP, hopefully around July/August time, we’d like to finish writing the new album and get it recorded before the end of the year. 

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Getting to Know…The Spectre Beneath: Interview No. 360 [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; The Spectre Beneath; Tumisu via Pixabay]