Phantom - The Epilogue To Sanity

Surreal in the breathtaking expansion of extreme and seemingly inaccessible compositional fragments into a coherent statement, this album The Epilogue To Sanity effortlessly achieves and augments both the majestic grandeur of black metal and the fierce, percussive brutality of death metal, without any one elements overpowering the other, in what is perhaps the most effective, sinister and important blackened death metal release of the past 25 years. Depth in harmony and thoughtful albeit dissonant tonal structures and extended lead soloing hold court alongside explosive and unsettling tremolo riffing, transfusing ideas through melodic continuity and an emphasis on the narrative coherence, atmosphere and diverging harmonies of blackened death metal music, somewhat reminiscent of something like Verminlust or Miasma, only much darker and with more unsettling, sinister atmosphere.

Introductory fragments meld into raging percussive assaults, which reverts to the pure streaming of smooth guitar textures created via tremelo playing at high speed, before branching towards multiple divergent harmonic passages, and dissolving into chaotic and dissonant, but entrancing, expectant and fertile, space for new atmospheric motion. If there is one concept that best defines The Epilogue To Sanity, it would be that of pure atmospheric horror. Unlike Phantom's previous effort Fallen Angel, however, this vile, fiendish and utterly macabre atmosphere is not attained through ritualistic minimalism, or trance-inducing repetition, but rather through thematic development and narrative storytelling brought about by Phantom's extremely complex use of labyrinthine song structures, the distinguished "riff mazes" the band is so notorious for.

Songs attain extremely debilitating complexity, and where other bands would stagger to build upon the atmosphere by awkward repetition of a same or similar sounding riff, Phantom swerves through intricate exchanges of maze navigation, now completing the vision of a perfect fusion between black metal's sinister atmospheres and death metal complex, narrative riff dialogue. But where The Epilogue To Sanity shows the completion of tactics unleashed on from Withdrawal onward, where growth of technical riffing styles abound, as in perpetuity a simpler pattern finds itself split and then recombined into a hierarchy of combat representing a theme, matched to wary drumming which lunges into direct blasts before returning to any of several states of suspension based rhythmic principles.

Above all else, Phantom's The Epilogue To Sanity is both the band's magnum opus and the culmination of both the black metal and death metal genres into a masterpiece so vile, so disturbing, so haunting, and so powerfully evocative, that it can easily be said to be the best blackened death metal album ever conceived, and will likely remain so for eternity.

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