People should know what to expect from Phantom Winter by now, third album in and clearly honing their skills to a jagged-sharp edge. First album Cvlt was a great bit of doom-laden sludge metal that was more sonic experience than mere album. The follow up, Sundown Pleasures, saw the band drowning us in the same blackened tide but with a bit more experimentation in the sound that, for me at least, left it feeling a little unfocused at times. Now the band is back with another dose of its menacing, slo-mo attack and more fiddling the formula, but this time it’s all beginning to fall into place like monolithic alien structures hitting the landscape with mighty, reverberating quakes as Phantom Winter take us on a bleak ride with a sound that’s more massive than ever.

Opening track The Initiation of Darkness does an admirable job of doing what it says on the tin: from wide open spaces of undistorted post-rock, echoing guitars and cinematic voice overs before caving into one of the most crushing sludge riffs that you will hear this side of armageddon. Yes, Phantom Winter is back with one of the most impressive tracks the band has issued forth to date and, a bit of head nodding aside, an addictively paralysing track to begin the album with. Not content to follow that with even more sweet blackened sounds of wonder, Phantom Winter usher in Ripping Halos from Angels – which again sounds a lot like it sounds, this time with a manic depressive black metal vocal barrage and an guitar riff that just about manages to stay this side of lunacy.

There’s more, plenty more, as the band sucks the light from the world, leaving only the lingering sound of shimmering shoegaze drifting over the darkening soundscape. The heady call of Frostcoven, that beautifully embraces and violently batters in equal measure, and the sliding descent into Phantom Winter’s very own brand of inconsolable darkness that is Godspeed! Voyager. Yes, it might take more than a bit of emotional stamina and appreciation of having your nerves stretched out on the nightmarish angst to get you through the last two or three tracks – by which time you have probably been completely won or lost by Into Dark Science. But the layered, growling vocals; the sheer weight of the cavernous sound that hits in an almost physical way (think Amenra); and the ability that Phantom Winter have for taking to the air into soaring tremolo flight at well spaced intervals should, for more than a few, make this an album to fall into head over heels.

(8/10 Reverend Darkstanley)

https://www.facebook.com/wintercvlt

https://goldenantennarecords.bandcamp.com/album/into-dark-science