It’s a silly day today, or rather, sillier than usual. But the silliness is superficial, a temporary skin-deep covering for deplorable conditions and events world-wide that will be every bit as wounding tomorrow as they were yesterday.
That’s a reality not lost on the Oakland band Phantasmal Abyss, whose new single that you’re about to hear they describe as a song that “presents a bleak, raw and savage sonic landscape that is consumed with darkness and ferocity”.
The name of the song is “The Spawn of Lycaon”, a title that invokes the mythological king of Arcadia who (per this source) “killed and cooked his son Nyctimus and served him to Zeus, to see whether the god was sufficiently all-knowing to recognize human flesh”.
The ruse didn’t work: “Disgusted, Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf and killed his offspring; Nyctimus was restored to life”.
As for this new single, it is everything the band have promised — bleak, raw, and savage. But the bright-toned riffing whirls like some exotic apparition, spinning and spiraling in ways both seductive and sinister while the drums hammer and the bass feverishly pulsates.
The vocals furiously scream like sprays of acid on fire; the double-bass rumbles, and cymbals crash; the riffing morphs into more grim, but no less menacing shapes; a guitar solo spurts into the fray, in an even more exhilarating manifestation of delirium. Finally, the drums come unchained, blasting and battering as the riffing seems to roil in a blend of cruelty and agony.
Or, to put things more succinctly, you could think of the song as an especially diabolical manifestation of black/thrash, supernatural in its atmosphere and visceral in its fearsomeness.
For those who might be encountering Phantasmal Abyss for the first time, the band was started by guitarist and front-woman Dara Santhai (ex-Serpent Crown, Larvae) and drummer Todd Wilkinson. Their pandemic-era first release, Visions of the Abyss, featured Andrew O’Neil (Mondo Drag) on bass. In 2023 they were joined by Rafael Martinez (Black Cobra, 16, Acid King) on bass, and the song you’ve just heard marks his first recording with the band.
Phantasmal Abyss recorded most of “The Spawn of Lycaon” themselves, with some help from recording engineer Scot Proctor, and it was mastered at Greg Wilkinson’s Earhammer Studios. It will soon be available on the band’s Bandcamp platform.
The music of Phantasmal Abyss is recommended for fans of Unleashed, Dissection, Destroyer 666, and Aura Noir.
P.S. Phantasmal Abyss will be embarking on a Pacific Northwest tour this month, and you can find the dates and places in the flyer below.
https://phantasmalabyss.bandcamp.com/album/visions-from-the-abyss
https://www.phantasmalabyss.com
https://www.facebook.com/phantasmalabyss
