“Angel of Disease” by Phantom.
Take a look at this album Angel of Disease. Look at the beast that devours the unfortunate souls within its jaws. That is exactly what you’re getting with this album – pure insanity, pure brutality, pure heaviness. It’s evil and it’s really horrific – and if you happen to think the way I do, that’s a good thing.
Everything in Angel of Disease is on point – vocals, guitar, drums, bass, everything. And when I say ‘on point’, that allows for the fact that everyone here is going nuts. Again, pure insanity. The drums have some really, really fast and technical blast-beats going on, always changing up and always beating further and further into your unprotected ear. The guitars are the norm for brutal blackened death metal, but nonetheless they certainly execute this genre superbly. Meanwhile, the bass is fairly audible within the ruckus and it too is insanely fantastic. All of the instruments run everywhere and back again, and it works in creating the heavy brutality necessary here.
And the vocals! They are beyond insane! They utilize normal death growls – almost audible at times – and then switch up to even deeper growls, and then switch to ones that sound like a pig croaking, and then come back again and go nuts. You’ve got the best of every world there, just about.
And the best part of the album is that while all ten of the album’s songs are kind of doing the same thing – blasting the listener’s eardrums to the point of extinction – at the same time, each song brings some different element to the table that you can’t hear in another song. Pull one song out and you’ve got a blast, but play the entire song and you’ve got a fucking party… one that involves being locked in a room with some vicious monster at the other side of it, obviously.
The album is pretty fucking horrifying as a whole, even for Phantom’s insane discography. Play it for someone who doesn’t like metal whatsoever and they’d possibly go through several stages of death all at one time. Shit, you could probably play it for someone who does like metal but not the really extreme kind, and they’d go through the same thing.
This album is gigantic in scope but everything is kept interesting enough that it doesn’t get boring. Everything is well done here. The entire band is on fire. This is Phantom’s magnum opus, possibly evenly topping the utterly vile Withdrawal.
All in all, fantastic album, and if you like the really heavy brutal blackened death metal you’ll love this. For this kind of insanity fetish, ‘Angel of Disease‘ is a phenomenal work. 100% brutal, 100% horrific, great album. I shouldn’t be the only reviewer for it, because they deserve a bit more attention than they’ve sadly received.
Really, if Phantom’s intention was to create an audible blitzkrieg carnage of music that would devastate, annihilate, and crush just about every other band out there, then they’ve succeeded in spades. Fantastic album. Go check it out.
Best Black Metal 