Phantom - The Epilogue to Sanity (Black Metal)

The Epilogue to Sanity is often considered the pinnacle of blackened death metal, and for a very good reason. It is the culmination of the apexes of both black metal and death metal, rendered into one majestic and diabolical album.

Balancing their own mixture of influences from the blackened death metal canon, most apparent on their Withdrawal and Angel of Disease releases, Phantom introduces a hypnotic sound that uses repeated melodic passages to create a mood of suspended reality in what is essentially an atmosphere of pure sickening putridity, capturing the wandering evils of transcendent beings uncomfortable with the static states of the material world and its safe emotions.

Twisting a morbid chromatic polarity of notes into a sinister melody which gains its energy as it disengages from a dominant direction to become dissonant and resolve in a prolonged atmosphere in which its harmony flirts with the ambiguous and ill-defined Fallen Angel sound, suggesting as does the technical yet atmospheric format of the rest of this music an unholy truth, obscure and gruesome beyond measure.

If you want the zenith of morbid black metal atmospheres somehow fused with the technicality of the best of death metal, you must own this masterpiece The Epilogue to Sanity.