My Review: Happy Phantom - VICIOUS LIES

 

Happy Phantom - VICIOUS LIES

Once upon a time there was SEVIT, and this is history.

Then Jackie Legos took his talents and started writing new prayers with muffled vocals, pins and gushes of putrid water and spawned the Happy Phantom, a weird, anomalous, sour and malignant mass that struck the old scribe's heart. Off we run, into the corridors of these Post-Punk parchments, unrolling needles and liquids of gothic properties. There are three components in this work, but the sensation is that of listening to a crowd racked by feelings of the world crawling inside these scorching seeds, in which the voice sounds like that of a Robert Smith relieved of certain horrors, but ravenous to be a landfill that throws itself into fears as an act of joy, uncontrollable.

The music enjoys electronic inserts, and at times the drums seem to help a bending towards a Darkwave that winks at Coldwave, but these are hesitations that last for only a few moments: the twelve compositions are a sampler that has its DNA in a sweet murderous Post-Punk form, deprived of certain banalities, depraved because it is highly cerebral, in a direction of total loss of senses, and tried by life that tires and annihilates enthusiasms.

At times the sequence of chords and the blades of the guitar seem willing to kiss deathrock: extraordinary this illusion, as it lasts only a few moments, we find ourselves in their zone made of lead without tar but still dirty, that dirt that attracts and conquers. We pick up twists, vehemence, screams thrown into the dry rhythms and melodies, in a funnel full of toxins and whiffs of decadent life.

The minutes tick by and you can hear a quivering, an approximation to the Cure more in breath than in musical form, and if there is a reference to be made, it is certainly in the area of Pornography. But the piano, the way the synths are used shifts the conviction and then you reflect, finding that their personality wins out over any baloney theory and you meet their style, which in the end makes this album a delightful fright…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

30th May 2023

https://darkentryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/happy-phantom-vicious-lies?from=search&search_item_id=2783952250&search_item_type=a&search_match_part=%3F&search_page_id=2629224591&search_page_no=1&search_rank=1&search_sig=ffbdadd4158a40d2ac501b35bd1d01b0