UK industrial/sludge metal duo Phlefonyaar announces new EP »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica«; first single & music video out now!
UK industrial/sludge metal duo Phlefonyaar has announced their new EP, »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica«, which will be released independently on September 18th, 2026.
Watch a music video for the first single »The Last Funeral In Town« below!
Tracklist:
01. The Lion’s Gone Walkin’
02. The Lightning Rod Seller
03. The Last Funeral In Town
04. The Curse Of Blackditch Hollow
05. Rust In The Prayer Jar
06. The Widow’s Lantern Swings
Courtesy of Imperative PR:
Between the desert and the swamp, in an empty corner of a world that only exists in a certain recurring dream of shadows, smoke, gunfire and monsters, there’s a town with no name. It’s the home of snake oil salesmen, moonshine distillers, harlots, mad scientists, necromancers, gunslingers and things so old and dead they’ve forgotten what they used to be. If the nighttime journeying of your sleeping mind ever brings you to this place, wandering through its dust devils and rotting coffins, be sure to drop a coin in the prayer jar and turn away from the widow’s lantern…and there’s a chance, a small one but better than none, that you might just make it home…
Phlefonyaar are purveyors of dark, extreme metal – thundering anthems constructed from gnarled, grisly riffs, harnessed chaos, shadowed atmosphere, tales from the far side of the imagination and the all too close black impulses of the human heart. Spawned in the last years of the 1990s they released a series of demos and an EP, 2016s »Kissing Carrion«, before finally unleashing their debut album, »Septic, Bitter And Hardbitten« in 2017, to great critical acclaim – Metal Hammer relishing the album’s “slow-motion trek through the bleakest avenues of your mind”. Second album »We Rest When The Crows Feast« followed in 2020, an album that had respected Austrian webzine Stormbringer reflecting on “sweeping monster riffs” and “dramatic narratives and surreal locations”. At the heart of Phlefonyaar there has always been Jim Males and Paul March, their shared obsessions with bleakly atmospheric music and the things that dwell in the darkest recesses of the human psyche evolving together over the decades. Bonded in blood, nightmares and black, twisted humour they are now ready to reveal their latest monstrous creation – a bastard child of doom, death, drone, industrial sludge and fractured sanity… »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica«.
»The Lion’s Gone Walkin’« slams the listener straight into the menacing world of Phlefonyaar’s »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica«, it’s snarling, aggressive guitars and methodical, pounding beats delivering blow after blow in relentless fashion. There’s no respite to be found as »The Lightning Rod Seller« follows in the lion’s wake, with its huge riffs circling the central nail of machine-like beats with a sick sway and groove. There’s an aura of grime, grit and engine oil hanging like a malignant miasma over this hypnotic, battering construct of sonic attrition. »The Last Funeral In Town« comes next, rolling in like a lurching, rollicking, steampunk war machine, running on rust and rage. It’s a vicious nail bomb of a track and those hammer blows just keep falling. Despite the single-minded, uncompromising violence of »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica«’s dark tales, it also somehow manages to fire the imagination with its incendiary onslaught – conjuring strange images and weaving mind warping narratives within its cauldron of noise and coruscating riffs. There’s a sense of sinister folklore writhing beneath the surface of »The Curse Of Blackditch Hollow« and in the flailing madness of »Rust In The Prayer Jar«. And it all leads to the final act of terror, »The Widow’s Lantern Swings«, where vast, doomed riffs cut through the shadows of dusk and chattering, restless spirits meet implacable, overwhelming firepower… it’s a soul scouring conclusion to Phlefonyaar’s most complete and convincing album to date.
Angry, abrasive, violent and addictive, a hallucinogenic vision laced with threat, the pages of the »Encyclopaedia Sociopathica« will open before you on September 18th. There will be no further warnings.
“…intoxicating and disorientating and annihilatingly heavy…” — Metal Hammer
Line up:
Jim – Narcolepsy, guitars, songwriting
Paul – General misanthropy, bass, songwriting
FFO: White Zombie | Hooded Menace | Ministry | Godflesh
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well