Phantom Sea – ‘Vulture Down’ – 01/08/2018.
Phantom Sea – Blackpool, England, United Kingdom.
For our previous work on the band – Click Here.
Phantom Sea are a band that to cope with the dreary skyline of their Blackpool home, have like many of the region’s stellar bands elected to play as loud as is doable just to forget. They choose to do so via an eclectic blend of Metal music ranging from gloom-enveloped and drudging Doom Metal to the sluggish tone of Sludge dusted-off with timely intrusions from classic melodic guitars and then some.
The band’s debut EP – a dated MF review of which you can find above – boasted five-tracks of crushing riffs alongside a welcome and notable groove and since then bar a handful of live shows, Phantom Sea have been considerably quiet. That is of course, until now.
‘Falling Lights’ is looming and foreboding as it edges towards to a pace and a level of visceral aggression that I really didn’t expect from Phantom Sea. The band take Thrash Metal and charge it with the extremity of Hardcore Punk to the point where Grindcore, Powerviolence and Death Metal come into play alongside welcome melodic leads taking the edge off in the right places.
The single ‘Deep Waters’ is very much a return to form, or rather the form of the band’s debut release albeit with harder-riffs and further foreboding melodic leads again expertly placed.
It is after further soaring melodic leads toned somewhat progressively that the band fall into Metallic Hardcore contrasting these newer melodic elements well-enough and showing Phantom Sea to be thinking outside the metal-phorical box.
Vulture Down is a long album and would be even longer if the band had entirely retained there earlier Stoner/Doom Metal sound. Instead, this debut full-length adapts to the longer song durations with further musical ability and influences a litter further and wide. ‘Thunderhead’ is both a highlight and testament to this, particularly between 4:05-5:03, where the band take the dramatised strings of Iron Maiden and twist it to their will.
‘Swamp Thing’ was another foreboding forerunner and a track providing me with another excuse to use said description. ‘Swamp Thing’ is very much the Black Tusk-esque Doom-infected Metal track the band are known for but admittedly it stands as an opinion dividing track between the former and current sounds.
The aptly titled – ‘Prepare For More’ again bridges this new found interest in Hardcore Punk, jagged riffs and melodic guitars in perhaps one of the best on the release. ‘Echoes’ follows the old-guard of Phantom Sea refreshed into something more applicable to their current format while, ‘Horizons’ on the other hand is another maelstrom of aggression and a potential show-stealer.
Whether more traditional or dare-I-say more purest Metal fans will embrace or be wholly confused by this seamless transition into Hardcore Punk and Metalcore that Phantom Sea seem wholly partial to now is anyone’s guess but with tracks as shredding and melodic as ‘Burnt Offerings’ any real complaints should be hard to find.
By the time of the ironically titled and penultimate track ‘Terminus’ Phantom Sea may well be still full of those jagged little metallic beans but it is at this stage that the record consumes you. ‘Terminus’ is again nothing short of impressive and more than enough to introduce the mammoth 15:00 eponymous closer that is ‘Vulture Awake’ where Phantom Sea toy with the idea – either directly or no – of drawn out instrumentals ahead of their visceral standard and that is where I’ll leave you.
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