Phlefonyaar are purveyors of dark, extreme metal – thundering anthems constructed from gnarled, grisly riffs, harnessed chaos, shadowed atmosphere, tales from the far side of the imagination and the all too close black impulses of the human heart. Spawned in the last years of the 1990s they released a series of demos and an EP, 2016s Kissing Carrion, before finally unleashing their debut album, Septic, Bitter And Hardbitten in 2017, to great critical acclaim – Metal Hammer relishing the album’s “slow-motion trek through the bleakest avenues of your mind”. Second album We Rest When The Crows Feast followed in 2020, an album that had respected Austrian webzine Stormbringer reflecting on “sweeping monster riffs” and “dramatic narratives and surreal locations”. At the heart of Phlefonyaar there has always been Jim Males and Paul March, their shared obsessions with bleakly atmospheric music and the things that dwell in the darkest recesses of the human psyche evolving together over the decades. Bonded in blood, nightmares and black, twisted humour they are now ready to reveal their latest monstrous creation – a bastard child of doom, death, drone, industrial sludge and fractured sanity…Encyclopaedia Sociopathica.
‘The Lion’s Gone Walkin’ slams the listener straight into the menacing world of Phlefonyaar’s Encyclopaedia Sociopathica, it’s snarling, aggressive guitars and methodical, pounding beats delivering blow after blow in relentless fashion. There’s no respite to be found as ‘The Lightning Rod Seller’ follows in the lion’s wake, with its huge riffs circling the central nail of machine-like beats with a sick sway and groove. There’s an aura of grime, grit and engine oil hanging like a malignant miasma over this hypnotic, battering construct of sonic attrition. ‘The Last Funeral In Town’ comes next, rolling in like a lurching, rollicking, steampunk war machine, running on rust and rage. It’s a vicious nail bomb of a track and those hammer blows just keep falling. Despite the single-minded, uncompromising violence of Encyclopaedia Sociopathica’s dark tales, it also somehow manages to fire the imagination with its incendiary onslaught – conjuring strange images and weaving mind warping narratives within its cauldron of noise and coruscating riffs. There’s a sense of sinister folklore writhing beneath the surface of ‘The Curse Of Blackditch Hollow’ and in the flailing madness of ‘Rust In The Prayer Jar’. And it all leads to the final act of terror, ‘The Widow’s Lantern Swings’, where vast, doomed riffs cut through the shadows of dusk and chattering, restless spirits meet implacable, overwhelming firepower…it’s a soul scouring conclusion to Phlefonyaar’s most complete and convincing album to date.
Angry, abrasive, violent and addictive, a hallucinogenic vision laced with threat, the pages of the Encyclopaedia Sociopathica will open before you on September 18th. There will be no further warnings.
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