For Metal to feel its heaviest, it must also hold with the powerful attack of the guitar, a bleak emotional darkness to it, or it is just guitars beating your ears as fast as they can.
Phobetor has succeeded in finding the sweet spot here with their new album, A Solitary Sigil (Black Jasper Records).

While they blend elements of Black Metal with their sound, the haunting guitar melodies set it apart from the more blast-beaten brutality of most bands today. The vocals are at a more tortured mid-range snarl with only lower Death Metal growls as an accent to further punctuate the aggression as needed. They do not fall into the trap many Death Metal bands do, by only making hyper-aggression the singular focus of their sound, but understand that songwriting requires nuance.

The least subtle of the sonic colors they paint this album with are the drums, which are driven with the kind of bombastic fury one expects a Death Metal band to possess. He is a skilled drummer, which kind of comes with the territory if you are playing Metal in the zipcode of Death Metal in terms of intensity.

Clean guitar provides the calm before the storm as they rage into a sonically in-your-face sweeping charge of sound. It might take a second listen for it to all click, as initial listens might be overwhelmed, but the subtle elements that add up into a very immersive sound. The drums are not one of the band’s more subtle elements, as they come crashing at you like a hurricane. A burly bass tone gives “Fading Black Winter” its backbone, and helps anchor it in a more Entombed-like corner of Death Metal.

“The Vacant Worlds Within Us” roars from the previous song, with a more tremolo-picked guitar line, creating the tension of its energetic center. The drums slow down to indulge the band in a more desolate mood. This band does not just allow atmosphere tremolo-picked guitar to sprawl indulgently out to the night, but uses restraint in these arrangements so the songs do not wear out their welcome.

This is not to say there is not atmosphere, as a more dissonant mood haunts the last song, but it’s well-balanced. The vocals maintain the same scowl that has dominated this album. They strap you in and take you on their ride with this bone crusher of a closer, which finds them capturing a nice balance of what they do as a band on this song.

If you are looking for Death Metal that not only meets the genre’s prerequisite heaviness, but also adds a darker mood to set some emotional weight behind the distorted riffs, that carries a bleak honest that feels like inner ugilies turned outward into sound, that is black magic than if they tried to appropirate occult references, to here is to the sound of real darkness.

Buy the album here:
https://phobetormerch.bigcartel.com/

8 / 10
WIL CIFER
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