Mors philosophus est. — Exacting in its chiseled depiction, and to the point of believable relief, we can confirm the artist has stared with bleakest wonderment into the black mirror’d face of Death and wilted into understanding. Life’s achievement is in fact facing death, acknowledging inevitable shattered dispersal and living in awakened consciousness which embraces impermanence. At a state of highest awareness Montréal, Quebec-based death metal band Phobocosm set their third full-length album in the aftermath, beneath the crushing mulch of the wheel and promote a life examined. ‘Foreordained‘ is a rapturous shove toward mortality, the inevitable end and they’ve pressed this issue all the way out to the end of all life as they complete their initial trilogy of LPs in this their fifteenth year extant. Displaying primacy in every detail and presenting their most cohesive, thunderous work to date these folks have deservedly achieved one of the best death metal releases of the year.

Phobocosm formed as a trio circa 2008 between folks involved with brutal and/or technical death metal groups Vengeful and Atheretic as they’d begin to focus on a non-traditional approach to traditional death metal in emphasis of its increasingly dissonant, atmospheric possibilities. No doubt those tags mean different somewhat different things today than they did fifteen years ago but most will recognize this band’s point of formation as part of a generational/canonical tide coalescing in the late 2000’s which wasn’t so flatly concerned with ‘retro’-fication of death metal. It’d be some time before we’d get their first recordings, a fully-fledged full-length debut (‘Deprived‘, 2014) wherein the essence of the band was entirely well formed. Their sound matched the liquid atmospheric forms of Ulcerate and their adjacency to late 90’s/early 2000’s Immolation, creating seas of riff and dramatic rhythmic sludging-about in nauseating but continuous motion. The tone of desolation, lingering despair and doom felt on that first record carries through all of Phobocosm‘s recordings though the follow-up (‘Bringer of Drought‘, 2016) is probably the most focused, linear presentation from to date in terms of it being clipped down to just four pieces in ~34 minutes. It’d been a prime efficiency wherein each song featured a slower, more dramatic pacing which culminated into one grand, horrifying finale. I’d appreciated this change in their sound back in 2016 for the sake of seeing something similar in Krypts‘ evolution and I’d found both bands building momentum/mastery with each release.

DEEPER LISTENING: [x]

Vengeful: A somewhat technical death metal band with close ties to Phobocosm over the years, currently features vocalist Etienne Bayard. Hard to pick an album to start with, probably ‘An Omnipresent Curse‘ (2009).

Dead Congregation: At the very least we hear the commanding yet devastated nature of ‘Graves of the Archangels‘ (2008) in much of Phobocosm‘s work, though we could maybe point closer to ‘Unholy Cult‘ for technical details, blurred edges in terms of what elements of Immolation‘s discography each band seem to take the most inspiration from in terms of feeling.

Ulcerate: If you’ve been a longtime fan of this New Zealand-based entity as I have you’ll find the fluid, ringing sense of movement and novel use of dissonance in Phobocosm‘s work likewise effective. I’d found ‘Bringer of Drought‘ and ‘Shrines of Paralysis‘ shared a similar magick from a different vantage point back in 2016, today I think there are some parallel aptitudes shared with ‘Stare Into Death and Be Still‘ (2020).

Towards Darkness: A Montréal funeral doom metal band which had Sam Dufour on guitars for at least part of ‘Barren‘ (2012). A random hardly related find I’d enjoyed.

The main thing holding these folks back from a natural album cycle, or, completing the songwriting for a third LP that’d been done beyond touring for the second album was of course, the pandemic. From what I’ve gathered ‘Foreordained‘ was largely writ by guitarist Samuel Dufour during a boon of activity in 2019 which’d sought to connect the first two albums of the band into a grounding trilogy statement wherein the formula and the stylistic growth available to the first two culminated as a better-rounded third stake. Before they were ready to go into full pre-production a 7″ EP (‘Everlasting Void‘, 2019) gave raw preview of the coming storm, plus a wild cover of Immolation‘s “Here In After”, and then the eternal shroud of our decline arrived and a thick layer of corpses were set beneath us in the interim. Needless to say their cover from one of my all-time favorite albums plus the hype surrounding the new song had me heavily anticipating this record for the last several years. Yes, ‘Foreordained‘ delivers upon its intent and the high expectations set.

The threads of life are detangled, the slow process of senescence in fast motion as the ringing dread of opener “Premonition” stings the ear with its anxious, slow-unfurling motion which only it seems to coil back taunting the ear for the first ~four minutes which serve to pull us into the harried plunge of “Primal Dread”. The motif expands as its rings through the first several verses in dissolution as vocalist/bassist Etienne Bayard‘s Dolan-esque guttural, scalding bellows impose as much as they present the expanse. The nauseating lull of the piece, perhaps the mastery available to its multi-guitar orchestral abysm arrives around ~3:13 minutes in as the first ringing phrase is modulated into more heated waves, a downward-facing drift accentuated by baritone-tuned guitar heft in thrilling motion. In fact I don’t believe we’ve ever had such cleanly-stated guitar sounds from Phobocosm to date. I believe Rob Milley (Neuraxis, Akurion) might’ve rejoined the band (he’d played on ‘Bringer of Drought‘) for touring though I’m not sure if he’d played on these recordings, which took place between 2021-2022. Either way you can tell they’ve put a ton of time finding the exact right mix for all of the thundering layers of guitars available and to the point that the bass really only lends a sort of aftertaste to the galloping, bruised up parts of certain pieces. For “Primal Dread” it is a clean-toned ringing body with its dredge set beneath the coffin lid of it all but for the new-improved beyond the 7″ version of “Everlasting Void” the bass guitar offers some deeper-felt stabs and flabbing hits which add even more to the motion of the main riffs.

I’d suggest most listeners pay closer attention to the details of “Primal Dread” as after several listens to the full album you may begin to find it contains a few key seedlings of motif which carry through different movements throughout the ‘Foreordained‘. To start this’d added a sense of déjà vu and familiarity to the full listen and in successive spins this familiar cycling of intensity ebbs and rises in a way which, I guess again recalled a sort of ‘Unholy Cult‘-type device where so much was put into the opening piece and the rest of the album sorted out that dense shotgunned idea in other ways. I’d gone into this record expecting a lot and there was a sort of trauma that came with being struck by it, especially so late in the year where the mind -wants- to wave things by so that it might not burn or overflow. Even just wheeling through the first half of the album, landing on “Everlasting Void” (a song I’d already known quite well) felt like I’d been shaken back down to bones by the clobbering dread of the album’s sound and eruptive movements. Apart from just a few masterful releases in 2023, nothing else touches that feeling.

Over on Side B we find the remaining three pieces razor-tipped to start as “Infomorph” yanks our corpse free of the black sludge beneath and thrashes through various blasting colonnade of roaring declaration and veering strikes, once again developing another hypnotic rhythmic turn at each point of ekstasis. The production values are quite loud and resonant to a degree that these faster, rattling sections are especially chaotic upon induction but most folks will find immersion achieved well before the fourth piece on the album. The well-rounded pummeling of “Infomorph” then meets the brooding gaze of “Revival“, nearly inverting the dynamic of the prior piece as much of this second half of the record seems to be preparing for the impact of the grand finale. “For An Aeon” is the fall from a high place complete, a doomed and distraught fume which refuses to collapse and a gloom about as thick as that of ‘Bringer of Drought‘. At this point we’ve learned their general language and cadence on the first listen but it will take a few more spins to dig up the nuances beyond an already serpentine pathway through this greater meditation upon death and the fortitude it brings.

To start it is obvious how this experience coheres with the previous two releases but it’ll take some deeper familiarity with prior work to understand ‘Foreordained‘ as both the ideal ratio of elemental munitions and a step beyond past work. Crisped fidelity helps but also a darker carbonized moodiness helps to impress morbidity upon the listener beyond the lyrics themselves. To add to the murky, dreariest brutality of the album’s atmosphere Phobocosm have commissioned artwork from Lauri Laaksonen, whom you will recognize from Convocation and labelmates Desolate Shrine, which I’d say best suits the band’s sound for its cavernous yet flowing black-and-grey downpour which we are set downstream of. In fact every element of this records design, running order, and fidelity appears deeply considered and moulded to a highest standard possible, ensuring that the impression is not only professional but loudly displays its bleak and imposing nature from the first glance through the tenth spin. There’d been no chance of this record running through any sort of analysis on my part and not getting a very high recommendation from me, it’ll have to serve as the record that turned me from interested listener to all-out fan.

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