{"id":5962,"date":"2012-05-15T00:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T00:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=5962"},"modified":"2013-06-01T15:57:09","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T15:57:09","slug":"album-review-philm-harmonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-philm-harmonic\/","title":{"rendered":"PHILM – Harmonic (2012) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILM
Harmonic<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nIpecac (2012)<\/span>
Rating: 6.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Philm is the project from drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer). It\u2019s a power trio of sorts that also features bassist Pancho Tomaselli (a long-time member of funk rockers War) and singer \/ guitarist Gerry Nestler (Civil Defiance). Given the membership and the fact that this is billed as a progressive power trio, I sort of expected a jazz inclination here (perhaps because I am an avid Alex Skolnick Trio fan?), but instead we get a hard-edged, quirky, semi-melodic fluid album. While many out there tend to see this as a million miles from what Lombardo does in Slayer, there is a certain rawness to Harmonic<\/em> that won\u2019t be hard for more open-minded Slayer fans to latch on to.<\/p>\n

Harmonic<\/em> is much like a triangle with three musical sides. The first is the raw, edgy, dark, but definitely metal side. This side is best exhibited by songs like \u2018Hun\u2019, \u2018Sex Amp\u2019, \u2018Mild\u2019 and \u2018Held In Light\u2019. They feature scratchy lead guitars, spit-filled vocals and crazy underlying bass and drum rhythms that never seem to slow down. I was very surprised that Philm would remind me of anyone musically, but Rollins Band\u2019s 90s work and, to a lesser extent, Precious Death and Blackball\u2019s debut album immediately come to mind. It\u2019s quite likely due to the funkiness beneath the heaviness and the \u201cno range but completely killer\u201d vocal work.<\/p>\n

The next side of the triangle is the soul-baring angst of songs like album opener \u2018Vitriolize\u2019, the garage-led noise of \u2018Dome\u2019, the back and forth of \u2018Meditation\u2019, and the fascinating \u2018Amoniac\u2019. It\u2019s this side that brings out the band\u2019s experimental element and its desire to be mentioned in the same sentence as MC5 and The Melvins.<\/p>\n

The final side to the beast is the quieter moments. To be honest, I expected to hear an album full of these types of tracks, so props to the band for taking everyone by storm. The title track, the fuzzy and off-the-cuff \u2018Killion\u2019, and the breathtaking guitar work of \u2018Mezzanine\u2019 all create a texture and atmosphere here that is the farthest from what Lombardo himself is known for, but is not particularly surprising given the histories of the other members.<\/p>\n

All in all, Philm\u2019s Harmonic<\/em> was very different from what I was expecting to hear. It\u2019s heavier than you\u2019d expect from the press talk and has an awful lot in common with the outer fringe bands of the late 90s and early new millennium. This makes it a perfect fit for the Ipecac roster since it\u2019s made up entirely of bands that do what they want, when they want, and do it how they want to do it.<\/p>\n

Lombardo and company have made a pretty interesting album here that gets better on repeated listens. On the first listen I found myself saying \u201cWhat the hell is going on?\u201d, but as I settled into the album over the next four or five spins, it definitely grew on me to the point where I\u2019m wondering if my above average rating might go even higher if I listened for another week?<\/p>\n

Mark Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PHILMHarmonic Ipecac (2012)Rating: 6.5\/10 Philm is the project from drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer). It\u2019s a power trio of sorts that also features bassist Pancho Tomaselli (a long-time member of funk rockers War) and singer \/ guitarist Gerry Nestler (Civil Defiance). Given the membership and the fact that this is billed as a progressive power trio, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5962"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12197,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions\/12197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}