ALBUM REVIEW: Phrenelith – Chimaera

On December 10th, Danish Death Metal masters PHRENELITH will unleash their 2nd album via Nuclear Winter Records.

Unsettling ambience starts the record with resplendent guitars that open a brooding narrative with building drums that fire into some absolutely insane beats, backing up a convulsive riff that contorts into something utterly grotesque. David’s hideously malformed vocals spew across a malevolent array of utterly savage riffing and maniacal drum work that is incredibly tight and yet has that stringy, fleshy and tendril-like sound that wraps around the brain the hooks into it with grooving, rotten sections of brutality. While the sound is a little clearer than on the magnificent “Desolate Endscape”, Phrenelith have not weakened in the slightest, in fact this material lives up to the barren atmospheres of its predecessor and all of the vitriolic deformities that lurked within. Occasional lead breaks give some Finnish Death Metal gloom to the festering carnage without losing and of that bone-breaking heaviness that has remained pretty consistent since the introduction vaporised.

Churning and heaving with that sulphuric stench, those funereal atmospherics coupled with such putrescent, charnel Death Metal work to absolute perfection in concocting something supremely atmospheric and yet no less crushing as a result. The guitars and bass all play off of each other in a killer fashion to give us this hugely multi-faceted and richly textured riff-fest while the busiest drumming the band has seen to date blasts and chimes in all of the right places while offering unforgettable dynamics that even the most casual listener could not be entranced by when it is is coupled with such monstrous fretwork and mutilating vocals that work in malicious unity to maim all in the pathway of the monolithic “Chimaera” which in itself is a perfect name for a ghostly, fire-spitting, pit-lurking record. A certain ironic occurs when these seraphic moments of glistening interludes are utilised to only be demolished by vitriolic Death Metal.

HP Lovecraft once said “It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.” This is a befitting statement as to why Phrenelith remain such a potent underground force whose cult following does not beg for mass validation. This is a band with a huge amount of integrity on a personal and musical scale whose uncompromising vision has never disappointed those loyal to them. This new offering of lumbering, hostile and profusely devastating Death Metal is something to witness in all of its splendour rather than passively listen to. “Desolate Endscape” was not an easy debut to live up to, but they have unquestionably achieved it. Aesthetically matched by the late, unforgettable and unrivalled work of Timo Ketola, this record is a complete package of pure disquiet

An opus of dread and decay that swirls in the murk while retaining a clarity thanks to the massive production, Phrenelith do not allow their vision to be corrupted, utilising this as an asset to deliver obliterating soundscapes of renewed triumph. Submit to this wondrous spectacle of mythical moulder and be left awe-stricken by its disturbed transcendent might.