Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Phobos Monolith : "When the Light Will Fade"



I guess these guys are being called cosmic death metal due to their sci fi lyrics. The press release suckered me in as it compared them to four of my favorite bands Tiamat, Katatonia, Paraduse Lost and Edge of Sanity. The growling is the heaviest thing these guys have going on. This guy is over the top full with breath he exhales. Almost like Cannibal Corpse. It is weird sitting atop other wise mildy melodic death metal. I am surprised I am able to take death metal after last month , but here we are. I wonder how many songs called Stormbreaker their already are. Here is another one. The guitar melody is so melodic it could be pop punk, yet we have this guttural grunt over it to kinda balance it out.

"Oktober" is more like At the Gates lite or Sentenced . I have not heard any of the influences that I mentioned earlier. The you can't fake the funk I always mention is at work here. On first listen you might think they are from Sweden. But a closer listen you can hear they are trying very hard to get there. They are from Mexico. The more upbeat mood, and inability to dig into the darkness on that level all makes sense. I talk about egregore from regions bands come from all the time and here is a good example. The warmer weather makes things more upbeat. You do not hear any direct Mexican influence on the music. But culturally when you consider the sounds they are surrounded by it makes more sense. Also the subtle thrash hints factor in as thrash was big in Mexico so they probaly grew up listening to things more along those lines.  "Credo" has intricate riffing and decent compostion.To their credit they write veryu compact song and get to the point while getting maximum riffage.  The drums are kinda weak , though the double bass flows like a fountain.

The last song doesn't do anything different from what they previous songs did. It goes for the big epic riff. I think if this was more dialed in with bigger sound all around they might sound more like Amon Amarth. More but no like them because they are not from Sweden to that intangible x factor is not present to make that kind of music. They go against against the grain, while creating their own sound by default as they can not change their dna. I will give this an 8. I hear a lot of metal, these guys are not doing something wildly different , but they are good at what they do .

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