The headline here is that PHILM is the side-side project of Slayer / Fantomas drummer Dave Lombardo, accompanied by collaborators Gerry Nestler on guitar & vocals, and Pancho Tomaselli on the bass. The sub-header is that ‘Harmonic’ confounds expectations at every turn, its stylistic diversity suggesting more of the influence of his bandmates and Fantomas cohorts Buzz Osborne and Mike Patton than his day job.
Opener ‘Vitrolize’ condenses epic dimensions into a space under five minutes long, from the repettively chiming guitar intro through a driving build-up through a succession of raging crescendos. The vocal contribution is succinct and all the more of a focus because of it. Meanwhile, ‘Mitch’ is a full-throttle chunk of grungy punk – scuzzy, fuzzy and gritty in the way early Tad is – but with the crunch of Unsane, only lighter and less relentlessly brutal, and this is indicative of the trajectory of the album as it evolves – at least to a point. Then there’s ‘Hun’, which is still grungy, but more Soundgarden, and the explosive choruses of ‘Held in Light’ are nothing short of monumental, providing a first-class reminder of why the quiet verse / loud chorus dynamic is so exhilarating when executed well.
The guitar-driven angst is nicely balanced by moments of quietly reflection, the sparsely atmospheric ‘Way Down’ exploring alternative avenues for the expression of darker emotions and the delicately proggy ‘Killion’ delivering some mellowness, improv-style, the jittering drums incisive yet keeping their distance from the guitar as it saunters skywards.
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The title track is very much a curio, a weird avant-garde drone with jazz percussion. it’s also quite unbefitting of its title, although that’s hardly a problem, even when it segues into the even wilder, wiggier jamming workout of ‘Exuberance’. It’s around halfway into this seven and a half minute knock-about begin to find myself wondering where the hell this is all going. It’s been ten minutes since the last vocals and the focus of the earlier tracks has been replaced by a tendency toward spaced-out meanderings. It’s like I’m listening to 2 EPs by entirely different bands back to back. In itself, it’s fine but makes for a very strange album experience.
The funk-edged punk-rap of ‘Amoniac’ part sits no more comfortably with any of the preceding tracks. It took me a while to figure just what this track reminded me of, before finally The John Giorno Band came to mind.
It’s full throttle and fill throat all the way on ‘Dome’, though, Lombard’s drumming powering through the buzzsaw guitars and biting bass, and ‘Meditation’ brings the album to an explosive finale, by which time I find myself giddy and disorientated. It might not be the most cohesive of albums, but it’s tirelessly innovative and never remotely predictable, and that’s no small achievement.
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