Seputus – Phantom Indigo (Review)

This is the second album from US death metallers Seputus.

Here we have 48 minutes of psychedelic extreme metal. Combining elements of black metal, death metal, and grindcore into meaty, substantial tracks, this album is not your standard extreme metal album.

The songs are complex exemplars of genre blending, and of how to do this in atypical ways. Importantly though, they manage to achieve this while also retaining enough song structure to be memorable and worth repeated listens.

Dissonant, psychedelic explorations of death metal are delivered with jagged spikes of blackened atmosphere and intersected with grindcore intensity. The songs are savage and unhinged, yet coherent and brutally focused. Seputus achieve the right balance between atmospheric claustrophobia and experimental ferocity.

Due to the band being made up of members of the formidable Pyrrhon, an obvious comparison can be made here. However, in their Seputus incarnation, they are less impenetrable and more blackened than their main band. Seputus can be thought of as a malevolent underground death metal act, one which employs dark psychedelic atmosphere and intense dissonant aggression to achieve its esoteric aims.

Phantom Indigo is very, very good. If you enjoy Immolation’s work, but ever found yourself thinking, “Hmm, I wish they were darker, more intense, and more angular in composition”, then Seputus are the band for you.

Very highly recommended.