Album Review: Phasma - Purgatory
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
If I thought January was a bit sluggish with quality new releases, February has stepped up to haul taut the slack. In Aeternum and Fossilization both sprang forth with daggers drawn, but I’ve lavished praise enough upon them - now comes the turn of Phasma to do their worst. They’re on Transcending Obscurity records, which is up there with mood lighting, rose petals and smooth jazz so far as good signs are concerned. But proof is, as they say, in the pudding – and label affiliation alone does not a good album make, specially when there’s only six tracks for a twenty six minute runtime; at that sort of brevity each wasted second counts, so this absolutely has to be all killer no filler. I’m hopeful, if trepidatious. Will Phasma uphold the reliably stellar reputation of their label?
Before us is a crepuscular account of deeds best left unwitnessed, mouths smothered that their screeches go unheard, winding shadowed alleys never quite illuminated by day. It aims to unsettle, to bask in the tension of the overhanging blade. There’s nervous energy to it, a restlessness, as though fits of rocketing adrenaline and naked terror push it through endless nights bereft of sleep. The scourging bluster of Terrorizer grind riffs meets interlocking disso-black chords on “ii”, as though atrocious yet clandestine acts lie furtive and concealed in the shadows. Mood and implied threat are punctuated with outbursts of strife and viciousness (and vice versa) in this toxin-slathered lotus bloom of styles and genre conventions. It leans a gnarled vestigial protrusion on the crutch of black metal’s inflammatory arsenal, while other of its unspooling tentacles – most notably the vocal performance - seem expatriates from the fell reaches of deathcore. At times, the thudding NYHC metronome of a truncheon cracking off ribs prevails with the crude irrefutability of physical force, while elsewhere “iv” sets chromosome-shattering slams like dirty bombs throughout its midsection. You should have taken heed of the warning the preceding melodeath section gave you with its stabbing minor harmonies; the album will not spare the lash if you didn’t learn the first time.
But there’s more to it than a caveman affection for punishment, and the writing holds subtleties that shouldn’t be disregarded for the sledgehammer application much of the album opts for. It keeps you on your toes, the edge of your seat warm. “vi” drapes a noose of frayed nerves about your throat with portentous ambience, anxious clean chords strung through it as breathy drums like the tread of spectres step nearer from just outside your eye line. It’s almost like something a cultured clique of Satanic sophisticates like Akercocke might consider doing, but the boot stamps down at 2.25 when the album flings a mace of a haymaker into your skull with all it’s ill-born might. A thunderous trample of blastbeats and tremolo follows, a literal kicking while you’re down that you’ll flinch in memory of long years hence. It has solos too, tasteful and effective ones. “iii” crescendos a passage of ugly, disfigured downtuned thrash with a malcontented showing of complex but melodic and scathing lead guitar.
I was mightily impressed by Phasma, and still more relieved that February maintains a lengthening mean streak. The band feel as though they’ve considered every step they’ve taken, doing their utmost to be thoroughly unwelcoming yet somehow compulsively engaging, disorientingly heavy without losing a legible through-line. It’s short, yes, but packs in as many ideas as do far longer releases without collapsing into a disjointed spasm of mindless entropy. It’s not as though many of us will lack for reasons to feel a certain antipathy towards the world we live in, but there’s always room for more. I hadn’t heard of Phasma before, and given the current climate of the music business it’s vanishingly unlikely that they’ll ever be as big as their talent warrants, so let me do what little I can and plead with you to support this band and buy this album. It’s deep, immaculately composed and performed, grotesque in all the right ways, and deserves a necrotic spot in your heart much like the one it’s bored into mine.
