Band: The Phantom CarriageCountry: France
Style: Black Metal/Screamo
Label: Throatruiner Records
I'd say that over the last decade, more and more bands are coming out of the black metal scene that are mixing other forms of music with it. The Phantom Carriage is such a band that apparently has been doing this for some time already. Though this is my first encounter with them, I only expect to hear good things coming from Throatruiner records.
What can you expect from this release, well, you'll hear black metal, late 90's metalcore, or mathcore now, jazz, and a bit of screamo punk all thrown at a wall and kind of blurring together into a disgusting mess. Somehow you get an odd mixture of extremely aggressive and crazy sounding moments mixed with more melodic and straightforward ones that somehow sound natural. Now, I'll say that while I definitely prefer the more spastic moments, the melodic ones do work as a nice counterpart to them, hear a track like The Horses Feed Their Birds. The vocals, while quite regular sounding screams also go into the weird punk rock style of talking as well, which is something that I just didn't really care for at all, but that's just me, I'm sure others will probably get into that more than me.
If you thought the above wasn't an odd sounding mixture, Black Rain Falls In Drops will amaze you with it's mix of the above with smooth jazz interludes and spoken word passages. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of something Mike Patton might do, but maybe not quite as left-field sounding as that, this isn't as straight up avant-garde. The track Les Fantômes Se Cachent Pour Pleurer also goes into a weird place, being under two minutes long and mixing black metal drumming with sounds more akin to that of polka and jazz music.
Overall, this is a decent release, one that doesn't always deliver my personal tastes, but it certainly has personality. I definitely enjoy the whole punk aesthetic on here, where these guys just don't seem to give a shit about what anyone thinks they should be. Definitely check this out if you're into left-field punk or black metal.
Overall Score: 7
Highlights: The Wreck of My Mental Ship, 16-04-10
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