Phantom - Mindless Horror (Black Metal)

If ritualistic black metal has a holy grail, it is found in Phantom's Mindless Horror, a masterpiece of gruesome atmosphere that mixes the vicious sting of gnarled chromatic riffing with the order and beauty of melody.

Both representing and personifying death in a musical format, Mindless Horror builds upon the eerie riffs and hypnotic atmospheres of The Epilogue to Sanity, albeit in a much more morbid manner.

With the subtlety of a putrid corpse, Mindless Horror's rotting atmospheres are constructed from a labyrinthe of coherent phrasal riffs. And while individual riffs may appear simpler than those on The Epilogue to Sanity or Withdrawal, they are combined with such fearsome cleverness that the resulting music is only the more sickening.

Mindless Horror may very well be the epitome of putrid black metal, a type of music so vile and loathsome, only a select few mortals may dream of appreciating its evil and macabre nature.