Somehow I keep seeming to pick up long discs with long songs for review and this is no exception. P.H.O.B.O.S. from Paris play pretty much instrumental material (with the exception of a few low vocal mumblings kept well in the background of the mix) and this disc at just shy of an hour has but four rather lengthy numbers on it. The style is on the whole industrial but things are done with repetitive beats and droning melody which are literally draining over the quarter of an hour length of the numbers. What is quite remarkable about it is that this appears to be the work of just one person Frédéric Sacri and it comes as no surprise that material has only been attempted live once.
With opener Necromegalopolis At Caprolites (yep there is some pretension at work here) we are into a futuristic soundscape that throbs at the very gristle. It is dark and futuristic and it is quite barren and expansive sound wise. The drums take a hefty clout but it is all done very slowly with emphasis placed on the heavy clattering sound. Guitars are like a swarm of locusts devouring all in their path as they wind around things. I would mention Godflesh but then again it is the band that often is accused of sounding like them Blut Aus Nord that I am reminded more of here. It is something about the lurching guitar tones that remind me of this lot’s countrymen.
James Plotkin is behind the mastering and when I read this and looked at the biog I was really hoping to get something that was going to be comparable to his excellent OLD album ‘Formula’. There are touches of it about the warped instrumentation but I really found myself having difficulty engaging with this, it is too repetitive and songs just drag. It’s a musical equivalent of ketamine and has you sliding down a deep dark hole, one that if you have any sense you really want to clamber out of.
‘Solar Defrag’ has a bit more clout about it due to the fact the sonic mass of instruments has built up but it is still heavily reliant on the same staggered rhythm repeating over and over again, literally sucking all life out of you. ‘Transonic Mahasmadhi’ is the last monolithic slab here and I have to admit that I am finding this an endurance test by now. Still having spent several hours listening to this album I am carrying on to try and fathom why it is having such a negative reaction on me. I think it is due to the fact that it lacks soul, it clanks away like a machine with little in the way of heart about it, going through the motions until the machinery breaks down (And when the machine breaks down, we break down).
So a bit of a frustrating listen for me here, I wanted to like this more than I could and I cannot see myself sitting through this again unless I really want to masochistically torment myself The fact the project has been affiliated with a subsidiary of Candlelight Records in the past proves there is an audience for them. Afraid it just isn’t me.
(5.5/10 Pete Woods)
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