Band:	Seputus
Album:	Phantom Indigo
Style:	Black metal, Death metal
Release date:	June 02, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

01. The Will To Live
02. The Learned Response
03. Tautology
04. The Forgetting Curve
05. Deuteragonist
06. Phantom Indigo

I'd like to not think of Seputus as a Pyrrhon-side project, even if every member is also in Pyrrhon, simply because that would be a disservice to how imposing Phantom Indigo is.

That said, Phantom Indigo sounds a lot like Abscess Time (more here), meaning that it will probably appeal to the same people, but the albums are distinct enough to make some sense for them not come from the same band. But if Phantom Indigo was released under the Pyrrhon name, I wouldn't bat an eye, especially since guitarist Dylan DiLella also makes a guest appearance, alongside Artificial Brain and Replicant members. But also it's not like this album and its lineup only have Pyrrhon written all over it, since two of the members are also in Weeping Sores, while the other was in Imperial Triumphant, and there's bits of all of those here. But also there is something that is just Seputus.

Let's get this out of the way. This is chaotic. This is technical. This sounds like a maelstrom. This absolutely sounds like an album produced by Colin Marston. Which also explains pretty much everything about the chaotic energy this band has. It's brutal and nauseating. It's exactly the kind of technical death metal that takes a lot from avant-garde and free jazz, but with some attempts at coherent songwriting. It's that coherent songwriting that is usually an issue for me in regards to a lot of similarly chaotic and brutal music for me. In that I get the appeal and I absolutely love it, but mostly in small doses. For such an album to have a longer lasting appeal, there's gotta be more to it than dissonant nausea.

Is that the case for Phantom Indigo? Well, I do find it constantly engaging over the course of its 47 minute runtime. Each left-turn feels more thought-out than simply random. It's obviously very disorienting and overwhelming, and overall a pretty exhausting listen. But for such an album, you'd be hard-pressed to find an album this effective in its use of pace changes, influences from other extreme genres (in this case black metal and grind), and claustrophobic textures. Most of my qualms rest with the production ironically, since there are moments where is feels a bit too amorphous for its own good. And I get that an oppressive album is using its production to be oppressive, but maybe be oppressive in some other way, you complete juggernaut.

It's quite likely that it will appeal to the same listeners that Pyrrhon usually appeal to, while the rest of the folks will probably find it too chaotic and dissonant for its own good. Hell, I love it, and yet I still find it too chaotic and dissonant for its own good. But I can't say that it doesn't make sense for it to be as such.