She Spread Sorrow & Luca Sigurtà’s "The Grimorian Tapes" (Helen Scarsdale Agency, May232025) is a ritual in sound - a half-whispered séance that invites you into the half-lit corridors of the occult, cloaked in crystalline dread. From the moment Alice Kundalini intones “Don’t be scared by death”, her voice slithers through tape loops and creaking drones, setting the tone for an album that feels both intimate and unsettlingly vast.

Informed by the lineage of Coil, Psychic TV, and Current 93, this Italian death-industrial duo excavates esoteric rites with a restrained precision that resists the fatiguing extremity often found in the genre. Instead of unleashing sheer noise, they lean into atmosphere: fragmented tape melodies, half-memories pitched unevenly, and Kundalini’s vocals - sometimes murmured, sometimes guttural, sometimes spiraling into chant - become the incantations that bind each track’s shadows.

Drawing inspiration from "The Black Pullet", an 18th-century grimoire on talismans and alchemy, "The Grimorian Tapes" is more than narration - it’s invocation. Yet Kundalini doesn’t pretend to be a witch; she’s more like a linguist deciphering a dead language, guided by symbols and resonance rather than spectacle.

Tracks like “grimoire”, “initiatory”, and “dharani” unfold like incantatory movements: ritual acts before an invisible altar. There’s humor in the precision - a sort of sonic stagecraft that reminds you this is performance, even as it approaches authenticity. For every hiss and spool unwind, you feel the craft: Luca Sigurtà’s electronics shadow Kundalini’s voice, grounding the ritual in tactile tension.

One of the album's triumphs is its ability to immerse without drowning. The tension is maintained - rarely overbearing - with just enough space for the listener to question if they’re hearing a séance or simply their own heartbeat echoing back.

If some listeners find the whispered delivery too distant, "The Grimorian Tapes" offers rewards: repeat listens reveal hidden layers, subtle shifts in tone, and a persistent drama that doesn’t demand attention - it earns it.

In a world awash with gothic clichés and faux-occult posturing, She Spread Sorrow & Sigurtà have crafted something thoughtful and uncanny. This is death-positive without romanticizing demise; ritualistic without moralizing. Think of it as a grimoire in audio form - where the spells are sonic, and the binding agent is your own curiosity.

Verdict: A finely wrought dark ritual. Not noise for noise’s sake, but ceremony in sound: unsettling, minimal, and compellingly deliberate. If you’re curious about the grammar of shadows, this LP parses it line by line.