Cassette tape with red shell and 10-page J-card, limited to 50 copies.
With the second creation to emerge under the Lifelost banner, his solo endeavour, Phlegeton (Wormed, Banished From Inferno etc) has created something more than a simple album. He has fashioned from the darkness an alternative dimension that hangs between the ice-shard eyes of the constellations, cradled in the blackness beyond the reach of human understanding. With each haunting, harrowing hymn that unfurls from the nest of serpents that is Punitive Damnation, the damned geometry of this other world’s tortured architecture gains strength. The visions form around the listener, taking on substance, the cold shadows of the interstellar domain bleeding through the sunlight of our reality. For those of a questing spirit Punitive Damnation can be a portal to glorious nightmares and alien splendour, a Fall into the fire.
Freezing riffs tumble past like showers of stars, while each song displays an essence of primordial chaos – unrestrained, unbeholden to form and physical reality. Phlegeton has breached the wall behind which the dark seas of the void rage for eternity, siphoning a drop of that ineffable other, that force beyond god into Punitive Damnation. Sonic invocations like ‘Miserwolf’ and ‘Time Terror’ will consume you, enthral you and carve open your soul. This is black metal at its most powerful, most imaginative, most unnerving best.
Three years ago Dialogues From Beyond, Phlegeton’s first LifeLost offering stunned reviewers around the world with its depth and intensity, Ave Noctum branding it “the manifestation of something inhuman” in their 9/10 assessment. With Punitive Damnation Phlegeton has walked further into the realms of the unknown, unlocked more doors that were never meant to be opened, and called out in invitation to the dwellers in the dark. On December 10th Onism Productions will offer you a key, a chance to share in the dreams of Phlegeton. If you should heed their summons then hold tight onto your sanity. Listen for the darkness between the notes, the words behind the words and prepare to shed your skin and lift the scales from your eyes.