Get ready for the apocalypse with Phobocosm.
Formed in Canada in 2008, the band made up of E.B. (vocals/bass, Vengeful), S.D. (guitar, Obsolete Mankind, ex-Vengeful) and J.S.G. (drums, Obsolete Mankind, ex-Vengeful), with live support from Claude Leduc (guitar, Chthe’ilist, Dissimulator, Atramentus), announces the release of Foreordained, its third album, on Dark Descent Records.
The album gets off to a saturated start with Premonition, a relatively short first composition letting the band pour out its heaviness under cavernous vocal parts. The mix slowly progresses before bursting into flame on Primal Dread, letting blast and dissonant harmonics mingle to better crush us under its heavy, oppressive riffs, while screams lead the massacre. The pace slightly slows but remains just as impressive, finally allowing its leads to suggest airy tones before giving way to Everlasting Void, which in turn rolls over us with a massive rhythm and the usual fat vocal placement. A few screeching harmonics are also lost in the devastating accelerations led by an energetic double kick, also found on Infomorph, a jerky track that doesn’t hesitate to break its charge to create a feeling of intense oppression, exacerbated by the sound’s continuity. The band does, however, create a few more airy passages to let us breathe before a solid final, leading to Revival, which of course remains in those thick, dark tones packed with contrasted riffs. Leads bring more heady, luminous tones to the block of darkness, but the composition is quickly followed by For an Aeon, the final track, and its as sharp as overpowering rhythm, letting vociferations haunt an infernal tornado subdued by some admittedly slower, but equally intense parts that regularly explode.
Foreordained is an album that makes no compromises. Whether in its heaviness or in the rhythm of a frantic blast, Phobocosm spreads its heaviest, most suffocating and most dissonant sounds to give us a glimpse of the abyss.
85/100