NON-METAL METAL ALERT!

That’s right. Turn back now if you can’t handle anything outside the long haired, guitar-bass-drums-voice format, ‘cos American darkstep act Phobetor most certainly have nothing you want…

Built around the inestimable talents of DJ/producers E-Sassin and Recall – who both have a long history and affinity with metal, believe it or not – Phobetor’s The Abyss EP is rammed with insistent, quasi-industrial rhythms and hammer-on-the-heart beats that’ll have your head spinning within seconds of impact. Wisely (for Sentinel Daily purposes) the pair lay on thick layers of unforgiving riffage every now and then – final track The Kill Frequency easily outheavies anything on the last Fear Factory album, for instance – with the resultant din being something that, if there was any justice in the world, would find a welcome in the record collection of everyone from drum n’bass aficionados to rusted on rivetheads. It won’t, of course, but a man can dream, can’t he?

And talking of Fear Factory, parts of this EP remind of the time when Burt and Dino were happily getting involved with the Euro gabba scene around the time of the Demanufacture album – if you liked that material, you should have no trouble with what’s on offer here – I promise.

Apparently Phobetor is the Greek God of nightmares, and certainly there’ll be many reading this for whom the idea of heavy d’n’b will be a sure fire harbinger of sleep-fracturing doom; however I defy anyone with an open mind and a love for RIFFS not to be at least a little bit swept up by the sheer heaviness of opening cut Bloodbath. Go on, have a listen – I dare you…

The Abyss is out now.