Band:	Chryst
Album:	PhantasmaChronica
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Avantgarde black metal
Release date:	September 21, 2011
Guest review by:	Roman Doez

01. PhantasmaChronica
    1 - The Awakening
    2 - I Are You
    3 - Leaving The Ashes
    4 - Storming Outside
    5 - The Surge Lands
    6 - Universe Inverse
    7 - A New Age
    8 - Metatropolis
    9 - The NovoPharus - The ChronoMagus
    10 - The Drill-Tower
    11 - Templum Tempus
    12 - Grow Into Labyrinths
    13 - The Architect Maze
    14 - Back In The Room

How fitting that a project that came back from the dead is named Chryst.

Chryst is most often considered to be the third iteration of the Austrian avant-garde black metal band Korova, later known as Korovakill. However, of this band only Christof Niederwieser remains, and Chryst is now his solo project.

Returning with a concept album is no meagre task, especially in the realm of avant-garde metal where it is easy to lose focus and end up with a disjointed mess of an album. PhantasmaChronica doesn’t fall into that trap. Each of the fourteen subsections of this 47-minute-long track has an interesting idea being explored that transitions nicely into the next one.

The album immediately hooks you in, as the first subsection alone contains several catchy riffs, and an idea both simple and brilliant that I have somehow never heard in metal before: speeding up and slowing down the track as if it were a VHS tape. This single idea is only used for a few seconds, and it is only one of PhantasmaChronica’s many eccentricities, together culminating in a uniquely bizarre yet strangely accessible album. Its avant-garde nature is never too outlandish or off-putting, remaining instead slightly more subtle than a Mastery or even Ved Buens Ende album.

The rest of PhantasmaChronica keeps on delivering. Between the slower, more dissonant parts ("The Surge Lands", "Universe Inverse") and the faster, catchier and more melodic parts, which still have some unorthodox riffing ("The Awakening", "Storming Outside"), all culminating in the excellent "The NovoPharus - The ChronoMagus", each of those subsections is surprisingly memorable and has its fair share of experimentation, like "Templum Templus" and its trip-hop elements. Niederwieser's vocals are at times ominous, at times ritualistic, but never out of place, and perfectly complement an already very well realized album.

Although I have been giving PhantasmaChronica some high praise so far, I do still have two complaints to bring up. The first one is this very silly-sounding synth used at the beginning of "Grow Into Labyrinths". The second and more substantial issue is the pacing. Some subsections of the album unfortunately tend to drag ("The Surge Lands", "Metatropolis"), killing off some of the momentum built up during the faster-paced tracks. With the wide array of original ideas thrown around during the album's runtime, it is much harder to excuse repeating the same riff over and over for three minutes.

PhantasmaChronica remains to this day a hidden gem of avant-garde metal. While it might be flawed, the overall package is a very creative album bursting with interesting ideas that will for sure keep you invested for most of its runtime. As for the future, whether Chryst will ever return is unsure. Christof Niederwieser is now... an astrology YouTuber?? So with this rather unexpected career change, it is likely that PhantasmaChronica will remain the only Chryst record, and a very good one at that.