AN NCS PREMIERE: PHENOCRYST — “ASTONISHING DEVASTATION”

Even if you don’t know anything about the Portuguese death-dealers Phenocryst and had managed to miss out on their 2021 debut EP Explosions (briefly reviewed here at our site), you could take your cues about their tremendous debut album from its name — Cremation Pyre — and its brilliantly molten cover art, with skulls bobbing in the lava, eye sockets glowing.

Another cue comes from the name of the album track we’re premiering today in advance of the record’s August 30 release by Blood Harvest — the perfectly named “Astonishing Devastation“.

As Blood Harvest has explained, Phenocryst‘s mission is “to illustrate soundscapes of disastrous, catastrophic, and annihilating volcanic and natural events.” As was evident on their debut EP, death metal plays a central role in that dire mission, but not the sole role. Soul-crushing doom and mind-scattering psychedelia have played their own roles, creating episodes of blood-congealing bleakness and spine-shivering sorcery.

We also can’t resist quoting this vivid preview of the new album from Blood Harvest‘s press materials:

Upon first blush, PHENOCRYST‘s debut full-length is perhaps purer death metal than its short-length predecessor; riffs are hulking and heaving, with a clearer production imparting a gleaming tank-like sound not unlike mid ’90s Bolt Thrower.

But even within this seemingly more “standard” carapace, odd & adroit sensations get malformed into miasmic shapes, and what seems like a no-less-awesome iteration of gleaming meat & potatoes DEATH METAL soon starts sliding and slipstreaming into a vortex of cosmic ash as the second half of the album begins to dig in its supernatural claws and frightening spaciousness opens up.

And that’s to say nothing of the subtly reverberating-into-the-abyss bits of melody dotting this sooty landscape…

But now we ought to get to the music….

All the cues are right: “Astonishing Devastation” is volcanic, and the sonic devastation frequently astonishing. But the destruction is not immediate. Instead, the slow ring of eerily reverberating guitars provides a chilling overture. Enjoy the shivers while they last, because soon enough the drums begin ruthlessly pounding, and the guitars begin boiling in a pyroclastic flow.

Haughty growls and malignant howls then take the stage and the music squirms, heaves, and towers, creating a magma-like monument of oppression and misery, punctuated by gargantuan power-blows and groaning bass notes.

An even more astonishing eruption occurs, with drums blasting, the bass bubbling from subterranean depths, and the guitars convulsing and throwing off sparks. Yet in the midst of the high-speed violence, Phenocryst continue infiltrating oozing and unsettling bits of melody, both unearthly and pernicious in their effect, and slowing the pace in order to stomp and moan.

At the end, the guitars ring again, even more steeped in morbid moodiness than before.

 

 

That’s the sort of song that will make people sit up straight and take notice, a multi-faceted amalgam of obliteration, creeping dread, and suffering that stands out. Fortunately, you have something else from the album to sink your teeth in (or to let it sink its teeth into you): a previous single named “Pyres of the Altar“.

There, the rhythm section again loosen bowels and crack bones, the scraped-raw vocals are again bestially frightening, and the dismal whir of the guitars creates sensations of cruelty and pain.

There’s also guitar leads in this one that seize attention with their ghostly flickering and wailing  maneuvers, adding to the song’s atmosphere of harrowing calamity where all souls are brought low. Of course, the song is also devastating in other ways, but maybe more like a rumbling tank attack than a display of sonic vulcanism.

And that, in the end, may be what will make Cremation Pyre stand out so strongly in the vast sea of death metal: No doubt, it is a study in devastation, but devastation in myriad forms — emotional as well as physical, haunting and chillingly hallucinatory as well as incendiary and crushing.

Blood Harvest Records will lavishly release Cremation Pyre on CD, LP vinyl, cassette tape, and digital formats, and pre-orders are open now in advance of the August 30 release date, all of them adorned by that molten cover art by James Campbell.

PRE-ORDER:
https://shop.bloodharvest.se/
https://bloodharvestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cremation-pyre

PHENOCRYST:
https://www.facebook.com/phenocryst