PHOBOCOSM

As winter starts to tighten its grip, PHOBOCOSM are engaged in a desperate embrace with the dark. An enigmatic, shadowy crew from Montreal, they have released two previous albums, "Deprived" and "Bringer Of Drought": both wildly individual eruptions of pitiless, abyssal death metal with a powerful doom undertow. In 2019, they released the "Everlasting Void" EP, which took the Canadians' sound ever deeper into the dissonant ditch, and it is from that same wellspring of harrowing brutality that "Foreordained" emerges now.

If the first two PHOBOCOSM albums aimed to conjure unfathomable horror and the extinguishing of hope, their third realizes that unimaginable terror in three dimensions. The opening "Premonition" showcases a fatter, nastier sound than on any previous release, wherein punishing clarity is offset by the foul churn of inhuman riffs. Fans of INCANTATION, ALTARAGE and IMMOLATION will feel very much at home here, but as the sickening drag of "Primal Dread" begins to unfold, it becomes evident that PHOBOCOSM have retained a tight hold on a unique formula. It drifts and grinds majestically across ten languorous minutes, thick with morbid atmosphere and audibly hell-bent on snuffing out the light at the end of this claustrophobic tunnel. A re-recorded "Everlasting Void" exerts the same absurd weight, but with visceral blasting and stately, melancholy grooves adding intrigue to the intensity; "Infomorph" takes off at an ominous, mechanistic gait, before Cthulhu's maw creaks open and PHOBOCOSM glide through their death metal gears, shards of vexed melody poking through a shape-shifting carapace of black bile. "Revival" is a more succinct exercise in crushing skulls: doomed out and destructive, it highlights this quartet's incredible gift for expanding and contracting as a single organism, twisting tempos at will.

Emboldened by its superior production, "Foreordained" does few of the things that modern death metal expects. But neither does it conform to some mothballed view of the arcane past. Between those two extremes, a song like "For an Aeon" has space to breathe. Dense with dissonance but muscular and momentous too, it paints a vivid picture of relentless oblivion, culminating in a final haze of feedback and ghostly howls. Again, there are plenty of bands operating in similar territory, but the fruits of PHOBOCOSM's abominable recipe have an unforgettably strong and distinctive taste. A big stride forward from the band's early works, "Foreordained" is one 2023's heaviest experiences.