(Andy Synn enters the gateway… and likes what he finds there)
One of the biggest issues, for any band at any level, is finding a way to stand out from the crowd.
I’m not saying that every band has to be totally unique by any means – hell, there’s an argument to be made that the more “mainstream” side of the scene actively favours bands all sounding the same way (that’s how trends work, after all) – but, at some point, you have to have at least something distinctive to offer, right?
It’s an issue that Canadian catastrophists Phobocosm have been dealing with from the beginning, as the sound they’ve chosen – although perhaps “chosen” isn’t the right word, as it’s clearly more of a “compulsion” than a conscious choice – is one that sits smack-bang in the middle of the increasingly crowded and intensely contested sonic territory between Immolation and Ulcerate… two bands who cast some very long shadows indeed.
But while the influence of these two seminal acts has continued to loom large over Phobocosm throughout their career – beginning with their 2014 debut, Deprived, and then continuing to make its presence felt on 2016’s Bringer of Drought (a personal favourite of mine that year) and 2023’s Foreordained – the band have stubbornly persevered, refusing to divert from their chosen path in an attempt to assert their mastery over this particular brand of dense, dissonant, and doom-laden Death Metal through sheer force of will.
And now, with the upcoming release of Gateway, we get to see them take their next step towards domination.
Arguably the band’s best album yet, it doesn’t take Gateway long to reveal itself as being just that little bit darker, and that that little bit doomier – without crossing into full-on Death-Doom territory – than its predecessor (which was itself a dark and doomy slab of disturbingly claustrophobic Death Metal).
Of course, while this is, in many ways, an expected step for the band to take (I’d have been shocked if they’d gone any other way), perhaps the biggest improvement (although it’s more of a case of subtle refinement than a total reinvention) is in the group’s increased willingness to deploy their more melodic and/or atmospheric embellishments to give tracks like “Deathless” and “Unbound” a sense of grim, oppressive grandeur (the latter especially) reminiscent of both Novembers Doom at their heaviest and Sulphur Aeon at their hookiest.
And while there are, ultimately, only four real tracks here – the aforementioned “Deathless” and “Unbound”, plus the charred, blackened blast ‘n’ churn of “Sempiternal Penance” and the brooding, slow-motion auditory apocalypse of “Beyond the Threshold of Flesh” – it never feels like you’ve been suckered or short-changed.
Partially this is becase Gateway is explicitly constructed, and intended to be experienced, as a singularly cohesive piece of work – with even the “Corridor” trilogy of imposing instrumental interstitials being integral to the album’s overarching identity – whose songs are designed to build on one another in a carefully calculated sequence that’s ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.
But it’s also due to the fact that Phobocosm have clearly embraced, in a very specific way, the axiom that “less is more” by packing all of their biggest riffs and best songwriting tricks – juxtaposing sudden surges of blistering blastbeats and choking coils of dissonant tremolo with dread-inducing patterns of ominous, hanging chords and a palpable, almost physical, sense of suffocating sonic weight – into an even tighter, more compact collection of some of the most crushingly compelling tracks of their career.
Will they ever fully escape the shadow of their influences? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop them from casting a significant shadow of their own going forwards!