The new album from Montréal’s PHOBOCOSM is out now! Gateway is available via Dark Descent Records on CD, vinyl, cassette and digital formats. Order the album at: www.darkdescentrecords.com/shop www.ddmsuo.eu darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com Stream PHOBOCOSM on Spotify and Apple Music. “Gateway stands as a superb death-doom record: tense, immersive, and executed with a level of craft that rewards close listening and good speakers. It’s the kind of album that reminds you why this corner of extreme metal remains so compelling when done right.” 9/10 – Metal Exposure “Phobocosm have clearly embraced, in a very specific way, the axiom that “less is more” by packing all of their biggest riffs and best songwriting tricks – juxtaposing sudden surges of blistering blastbeats and choking coils of dissonant tremolo with dread-inducing patterns of ominous, hanging chords and a palpable, almost physical, sense of suffocating sonic weight – into an even tighter, more compact collection of some of the most crushingly compelling tracks of their career.” – No Clean Singing PHOBOCOSM will join Brazilian death/doom band Fossilization next year on a European tour in support of Gateway. The Gateway of Wounds tour is scheduled to run August 14 – September 6. Official dates and venues will be announced soon. Gateway stands as an unrelenting and eldritch death metal opus that seals one chapter while unveiling the next. The album includes material from every songwriting period of the band, some of it dating back to the Deprived and Bringer of Drought eras, as well as Foreordained, of course,” explains guitarist Samuel Dufour. Gateway was recorded, mixed, and mastered by long-time collaborator Xavier Berthiaume (Gevurah, Sanctvs) during the same session as Foreordained, giving the two records a consistent sonic throughline while allowing Gateway to close established narratives. “We view it as the closing of a chapter for the band,” Dufour continues. “Not that our future material will be completely different from our existing material, far from it, but we have decided to do things a little differently next time around by adding new elements that haven’t appeared in our music before, exploring different dynamics and experimenting with a new tuning. Thematically, Gateway grows from ideas first explored on Foreordained: “The song ‘Revival’ from Foreordained inspired the album’s theme, which is the fact that humans have been trying to live forever – or to unnaturally prolong life – since the dawn of time, often for reasons even more absurd than the pursuit of eternal life itself,” elaborates Dufour. “We used this as the main theme and pushed the concept further, exploring the most repulsive forms of cruelty humans are capable of — even when using science as a means to prolong barbarity against their enemies.” Visually, the album continues PHOBOCOSM’s collaboration with Lauri Laaksonen (Desolate Shrine, Convocation, Pestilent Hex). “From looking at it, one can see that it is a gateway to something ominous, but what lies beyond is up to the listener.” PHOBOCOSM will support Gateway with select North American performances, followed by European dates in 2026. | 
