Philm: Fire From The Evening Sun

Impressive second album from Dave Lombardo’s ambitious trio.

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Slayer’s scourge of the double bass-drum has used his ventures outside the band to disprove the notion that sticksmen are simple creatures, and Philm is no exception.

Opening track Train further expands the genre-straddling formula established on 2012’s debut Harmonic, as an insistent ringing riff hook is driven home by metronomic snare assault, angular guitar shapes and Gerry Nestler’s malevolent vocal, suggesting a one-song battle of the bands between thrash metal, industrial hardcore and post-punk factions.

Further cut-and-shut mixes of styles still produce plenty of addictive hooks and fire-breathing thrash tornadoes. Omniscience manages to sound like Rage Against The Machine if they had been obsessed with such mystical figures as ‘the guardian of the knights of the tomb’, dipping a toe into prog-metal territory.

But nothing here is ever quite that simple – the last track is a cute, minor-key piano ballad that wouldn’t sound out of place on Damon Albarn’s next project. WTF? Ours not to reason why, just to enjoy./o:p

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.