Although the relentless 'cavern-core' trend of the past few years has quelled in the absence of convincing riffs and atmospheric dynamics that we associate with this murky, spelunking sub-genre, there is still plenty of chaos to be had around, Canada's Phobocosm being one of them, with influences of anything from Blasphemy to Ulcerate running amok through their thick, mired veins. Their debut, 2014's Deprived, was one of the reasons (alongside the creme de la creme output of pioneering mavericks like Antediluvian, Mitochondrion and Portal) that, despite its blooding excess of unruly brutality and sluggish Incantation-worship, I still keep my faith in this niche of music, and it was inevitable that through the conduit of one Dark Descent Records the group would continue to expand its retinue as a budding entity of this formula. Granted, whatever genre it is we're talking about, it's a perpetual labor to patronize and renew your sound; not only that, but to execute the newfound divisiveness in a coherent manner... none of which Phobocosm have quite attempted on their sophomore, Bringer of Drought, leaving, perhaps, something more to be desired.
Yet when I say the Canadians have not upped or refined their cavernous repository at all, I am not instinctively correct, but rather reflecting on the paucity of fresh elements that would render the music as immersive and punishing as the debut. The Canadians, unsurprisingly, have brought their huge, lumbering, even slightly granular guitars to the fore, such that songs like bombastic, crushing ''Ordeal'' reveal they haven't at all kept their cutlery dusty, delivering astonishingly heavy and smoldering waves of low-end chugs and sludge-like ruptures. Still, the song is probably my favorite among the bunch, (we're talking 4 tracks stretching between 8-12 minutes) so the rest of the songs hardly exhibit the same level of tactile destructiveness and pulverizing force, or, if anything, allure. Throughout the other three songs, we're exposed to a lot of contemplative post-metal, limping, desolate arpeggios that burst into cloudy swathes of distortion and titular chords in an almost Neurosis-esque fashion, sans the experimental tribalism of the California giants, sinewy impulses of fairly 'straightforward' old school death metal tremolos joined up by loose aural sections that make up for plenty of emotional resonance, occasional drum fills daunting and intimidating on the way.
The picture you get isn't a whole lot different from what Deprived had to offer, although a sludge/post-metal leaning is apparent, almost as though the Canadians are morphing into something in the mode of Mouth of the Architect or Holland's Sistere. However, there is a aridity to the riffs that just makes them too dry, lacking in intricacy, to be paired with Ulcerate, Deathspell Omega, or their fellow countrymen Gorguts, who possess an immovable vocation for balancing the cataracts of brutality and unearthly technical deceptiveness in a storm of highly refined wizardry. Not that any band has to be enormously technical to evoke satisfying, even stunning music: that much is abundantly clear. Indeed, Bringer of Drought nevertheless destroys within the furrows of its neanderthal regime: penalizing walls of sound and magnitude. The vocals are trenchant and great, highly claustrophobic and monstrous, just as you'd want them to be, looming over the instrumentation like an overfed cyclops out of hell, sending the listener's tranquility into a grating spiral of falling dominoes. My gripe is that by and large this isn't the most innovative thing I've heard, and even though its kills in its own standards, there's a point where it ceases to offer the listener anything more. I, too, am content that new bands are still channeling this atavistic and visceral sound that the new generation of old school death metal fanboys seem so enamored by, but without refurbishing their style, bands like Phobocosm don't have plenty of space to grow into. Solid stuff, gets a passing verdict, though I'd still vie for their debut.
Highlights:
Ordeal
Fallen
Rating: 70%
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