Cebu’s The Spirals: 20 and still aiming high.

Cebu’s The Spirals: 20 and still aiming high.

By Rick Olivares

The Spirals are a six-piece band (Louell Lopez on vocals, Patrick Gallito and Filman Andaya-Bongco on guitars, Francis Rivas on bass, Breezneb Rosende on drums, and J Martino Olivo on synthesizers) that hail from Cebu that in my opinion, released one of 2019’s best albums – The Curse of the Spirals.

The 12-track album released through Pawn Records in their hometown and then through United Cassettes Philippines in Manila, has sparked interest, and brought in a new audience; myself included.

I really cannot get enough of post-punk bands who draw their influences from influences Joy Division, The Mighty Lemondrops, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Sisters of Mercy, and Interpol. Sheila and the Insects dropped their fifth album, Love or Limbo in May of 2019 and they also took the same path; a divergent sound from their New Wave roots.

The Curse of the Spirals on the other hand features the same taught sound like a someone about to lose it and go ballistic. The songs of disappointment and bittersweet memories are wrapped in that with a sliver of Goth and the downward spiral sound of post-hardcore. This is a band that has had to work hard. In the words of Lopez, “their get-in-the-van-Henry-Rollins moment when they navigated Manila’s traffic choked thoroughfares for two gigs in one nights – Mow’s in Quezon City to BF Paranaque for a punk benefit gig. You want pissed? There’s Manila traffic. 

The result of all these experiences is a stunning concoction that is The Curse of the Spirals that reminded me of the first time I heard Siouxsie and the Banshees, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s BRMC, and Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights.

From the second that the first track “Days of Wine and Roses” ambles in then raises the stakes, you’re hooked. They pace the album well; clearly understanding the dynamics of soft and loud., and different time signatures. “Proto Martyr”, the second track, has that “Ghostrider” type intro of the Rollins Band that is propelled forward by that military staccato snare drum sound before the song erupts in a dizzying haze of noise. By the third track, “Oh, phantasm!” The Spirals cut loose.

And it continues up to the final track, “This Is Not the Spoliarium”. There isn’t one weak track. “One last scream into the human abyss,” Lopez sings at the start of “Revenge Is Forever” that takes everything down a notch, but not on the darkness. 

And that is why I named that album on my year-end best-of list.

Thus, I wanted to know more. To find out if there was more of this desolation; so, I reached out to the band.

The Curse of the Spirals initially self-released a five-song EP, A Decade After, in 2017. Pawn Records picked it up in 2018 for a re-release and the band managed to record a full-length album last year that became The Curse of the Spirals.

Just the like that, The Spirals have waxed prolific. According to Lopez, The Spirals will be releasing a 20^thanniversary album this 2020.

Looks like more will be cursed by the Spirals.