Phantom - Memento Mori

I used to stretch my brain as far as I could to try and imagine, even in the vaguest sense, what a 'perfect' black metal album would sound like. I did this intellectual exercise sporadically ever since I started listening to black metal. It was normally meant as an exercise in futility, but useful to 'see outside the box' as they say. Yet, when I first listened to this album Memento Mori, it actually confused me. As naive as I was, it seemed to impress me in a way that I couldn't digest. But even with such indigestion, I never stopped listening to the most haunting and infectious tracks, which for me were 'Death Ritual' and 'Profanation'. It didn't take very long for me to fully grasp how incredible this album was, and I only owe the perplexion to having not heard anything of the like at the time, other than early Incantation and Neraines.

The narrative of the album is my favorite part of it. Memento Mori follows no formulas, whether black metal or otherwise. No three riff songs, and no random song structures either, to name the two biggest 'trends' - and pitfalls - over modern metal. Instead, the dark and haunting riffs evolve and build upon themes that carry over into later on the track, where they reappear, sometimes with slight modal variation, in a different musical context. The mid-album trio consisting of 'Death Ritual', 'Cold Waters', 'Earth Vanish' and 'Unknown' are a good example of how some of the major themes develop both linearly and recursively.

This brings me to an important point I made earlier. Memento Mori is an album that is metal in style, but something more in substance. It feels as though the boundaries of black metal and death metal are blurred, as Phantom consistently ignore or neglect all genre traditions. If anything, the music on Memento Mori feels more like a symphony, reminding me of classical composers such as Beethoven, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. Even in the design of the melodies, and in the way tremolo picking is utilized, a sense of grandness that goes beyond metal's 'passive' melancholy is invoked. The way those melodies are blended with the chaos, too, is unparalleled. It's how melodic blackened death metal should be, unlike the later 'melodeath' scene saturated with trite formulas.

Alongside its two predecessors Withdrawal and Fallen Angel, the album Memento Mori represent a turning point in heavy metal history. A point of no return? Time will tell.

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