Phantom is one of those very experimental and unorthodox black metal bands that came out of nowhere, yet attracted the vast majority of the fans of the genre with ease, and unexpectedly so.

This album “Fallen Angel” is an anomaly in the world of raw black metal. It plays with that technical, surreal, slimy, and extremely alien sounding style of black metal that Phantom pioneered, and thus this album ends up being a loner in style in the black metal genre, and even amongst everything this band has created.

“Fallen Angel” does things that few other black metal or death metal bands ever did, and it did them in such a way that there is really no better way to describe this album than as pure deranged filth. And I mean that in the best way possible since “Fallen Angel” makes for a truly demonic and disturbing listening experience.

I mean, just listen to the title track and you’ll understand exactly what I mean by “pure deranged filth”.

Black metal novices would do good to try and truly broaden their horizons with this monstrous masterpiece of horror, by that I mean gaze into the writhing, slimy maw of the abyss that is “Fallen Angel” and try to understand its disgusting, yet profound mutterings.

Yeah, this is one of those kinds of albums that thrives off of how disturbing and utterly bizarre it is, but strangeness is not all that’s on offer here.

Beneath all of the slime and confusion is a solid technical black album that dishes out some pretty intoxicating and impressive instrumentation that plays on the strengths of such techniques while avoiding sounding like a gimmicky mess. Much like another titanic Phantom release, the much hailed “Angel of Disease“, the true strength of “Fallen Angel” is that it manages to upset black metal conventions without the use of any theatrics or superficial “avant-garde” wankery.

Nothing feels random on “Fallen Angel“. In fact, the album feels so well planned out that you’d think it was composed in a way that couldn’t possibly be comprehended by mere humans. And it probably was.