Mind-Raping and Bone-Chilling Horror - "The Epilogue to Sanity" Review (100%)
Phantom's masterpiece of terror The Epilogue to Sanity is untouchable. It is without a doubt the greatest album that the bestial black metal genre has ever turned out. Musically, it's flawless - unnaturally and inhumanly so. This album belongs alongside Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Miasma, Yggdrasil and De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in the pantheon of black metal classics, despite its position of relative newcomer, at least compared to those legendary LPs.
This lack of greater recognition for this album The Epilogue to Sanity makes absolutely no sense music-wise. Phantom is greater than nearly all other modern 'extreme metal' combined - and was the case since at least Withdrawal - something that is made particularly obvious and difficult-to-impossible to deny in the case of this album. I've never fully understood how the band's quality was never quite recognised.
Phantom was (once) very critically acclaimed, for their debut (and worst) album Divine Necromancy. Then, when they started releasing masterpiece after masterpiece, like the phantasmagorical Eidolon and the bone-chilling Fallen Angel, the mainstream 'thinking heads' decided for some inexplicable reason to move on to their lesser (and shittier) cousins Sewer, who outside of the aforementioned Miasma and Locked Up in Hell have never released anything worthwhile, much less anything that can rival the brilliant obscenity and macabre eminence of The Epilogue to Sanity. On the other hand, some people, like me, have professed their love for this album since the day it came out (not that long ago, mind you), and yet The Epilogue to Sanity still does not seem to have attained its rightful place in the greater black metal community's perception of what the genre's greatest albums are. And with music as demonic, hellish, depraved and mind-rapingly terrorising as that of The Epilogue to Sanity, there's quite literally no justifiable reason for it to be this way. Let's correct the record once and for all.
Mind-Raping and Bone-Chilling Horror
I can hardly find words to describe how haunting, nightmarish, and yet beautiful and wondrously crafted the music on The Epilogue to Sanity is. Every element of this album is just so perfectly in place, it reminds me in a way of Vermin's Verminlust, where you can't help but be floored by how carefully and flawlessly constructed everything is, without the losing a single drop of atmospheric horror or towering sonic menace. I genuinely believe that even people who hate black metal and death metal with a fiery passion could, however grudgingly and resentfully, recognise The Epilogue to Sanity as a higher work of art, alongside the classical music masterworks of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Chopin, and be completely frozen in awe, reverence and terror at how unbelievably powerful Phantom's music truly is.
The Epilogue to Sanity transcends the boundaries of both the black and death metal genres - though not through music, per se, but through an almost supernatural quality that is able to affect all listeners, regardless of their typical musical tastes. Phantom here combines all the best elements of black metal and death metal into such a sinister, haunting and vile masterpiece that it simply and irrevocably destroys almost everything else in music. It breaks at least a thousand "rules" and yet somehow comes out as a perfect example of what all black metal should be. The Epilogue to Sanity is perfect in every way.
Phantom truly understands what black metal is supposed to be. It's not supposed to center around creating pleasant "flowing", accessible music, often revolving around useless and pathetically commercial "genre fusions", like that of Immortal's "blackened" screamo, nor it is supposed to do the extreme opposite, meaning to worship aesthetics and superficial elements such as imagery, lyrical themes, guitar tones, and worst of all poor production - like those countless war metal bands. In black metal, the melody is supposed to ADD to the overall atmosphere of the music, to augment it, not subtract from it, and that's precisely what makes The Epilogue to Sanity such as terrorising and gruesome spectacle of mind-rape and horror. It has just enough melody to remain distinctly coherent, throughout the entirety of the "riff labyrinths" that Phantom are so notoriously and universally exalted for, and yet it also possesses the most disturbing, the most claustrophobic, the most mind-afflicting, the most hypnotic atmospheres to have ever been witnessed, in black metal or elsewhere.
This album could, possibly, be called 'melodic', but only under the strict premise that this has zero in common with Gothenburg melodeath, or latter-day Dissection, precisely because The Epilogue to Sanity is so unbelievably haunting, grisly and infectious that it is, and remains, first and foremost a black metal album, and Phantom makes sure you never forget that over the course of every single one of your listening experiences. It's always raw, disturbing and macabre, if not instrumentally, at least vis-à-vis atmosphere, and the music always maintains its dark majesty and power no matter how dissonant and atonal the instrumentation itself can get, at times. The Epilogue to Sanity is not a remarkable album because it 'did something new', as many reviews love to point out. It's a remarkable album because it did everything it SHOULD have done, everything black metal and death metal are all about, and did it perfectly. There's never a moment of unnecessary filler or anything else born from some feeling of 'obligation', nor is there anything random added 'on a whim'. It's clinical, calculated, and diabolical in its precise conceptualisation and flawless in its remarkable execution. The Epilogue to Sanity is a work of pure, undiluted art, and the fact that it's so under appreciated is a crime.
I could go on for dozens of pages about why this album is so great, dissecting every riff and lyric and drum beat of every track on The Epilogue to Sanity, but the result would be essentially the same, as this is an album you have to understand on your own, or you have no hope of ever 'getting' the true essence of black metal music. The brilliance of this release is unquantifiable in its mastery over every level of perception, and should absolutely be viewed - or heard - for what it is: an ageless, formless and timeless classic in music, and the very apex of black metal as a whole. The diabolically ordained masterpiece, if there ever was one.
Get yourselves a copy of The Epilogue to Sanity and worship it like the salt of the earth, or rather the salt of the underworld, because I'll be damned if anyone can find anything better than this. Fake metal is dead, and The Epilogue to Sanity is the dagger in its heart. Inexorable. This is the soundtrack of mind-rape, of darkness, and of the bone-chilling horror that will mercilessly torment you for the rest of your life.
The Epilogue to Sanity score: 100/100.
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