Origin:	France
Genres:	Black Metal

Phazm

Phazm is essentially half of Scarve, three members from that group apparently needing a second outlet for their musical energies. While Scarve focuses more on Strapping Young Lad-styled industrial-laced chaos, Phazm appears more rooted in black metal, though they really aren't a typical black metal band. Given that a lot of extreme metal bands have trouble expanding beyond their basic style, Phazm have surprising depth, almost to the point of one wondering what kind of music these guys really want to play. There are speedy death/black numbers ("Inchaos"), but also Satyricon-ish black tunes like "Fleshback", grindy slow black metal on "Resinous Balm" (shades of Khold here), down-tuned death-n-roll ("What A Wonderful Death"), and closing with "Dogs", a clear Motorhead tribute that would do Lemmy proud. Hate At First Seed is a pretty cool debut, nice to hear bands like this stretch things out a bit rather than lapsing into the every-song-sounds-the-same trap.