Phlefonyaar - Septic, Bitter And Hardbitten album review

With a name sounding not unlike something you’d gob up with a nasty cold, Phlefonyaar’s filthy fusion of industrial and classic sludge will likely leave you needing colonic irrigation. Septic…’s bizarrely bluesy, Tom Waits-inspired, demonic sermon of an opener, The Lingering Molly, may feel out of place next to the rest of the album, but it works surprisingly well, making way for the cyber-sludge dirge of Temple Bells After Midnight, a killer track channelling Demanufacture-era Fear Factory. Paul March pelts out gruff vocals with a fervent ferocity, his iron lungs giving Eyehategod’s Mike Williams a run for his money. The London duo’s dark, dank and downright dirty breed of metal conjures up visions of two doomsday thugs dragging a dead body through a muddy, post-apocalyptic cemetery, pummelled with rain and spitting on graves. It’s a slow-motion trek through the bleakest avenues of your mind: intoxicating and disorientating and annihilatingly heavy yet unrelentingly cathartic.