Review & Full Album Premiere: Uncle Woe, Phantomescence
[Click play above to stream Phantomescence by Uncle Woe in its entirety. Album is out Oct. 23 on Packard Black Productions.]
An undercurrent of precision pervades the inward-looking expanse of Uncle Woe‘s second full-length in less than a year, Phantomescence. The four-track release runs 40 minutes on the dot, with half comprising exactly 20 of those 40 split into two songs, one about six and a half minutes and the other over 13. As the tracks are filled out with silence at the end, it seems entirely purposeful that Phantomescence was constructed this way, though I’ll admit to not really knowing what purpose such symmetry is intended to serve. It might just be a means of exerting some control on the part of founding vocalist, guitarist, bassist and keyboardist Rain Fice — who executed late-2019’s Our Unworn Limbs (review here) completely as a solo-project — over what seems like a chaotic torrent of emotional and crunching, angular sounds.
Fice mixed, mastered and did the cover art for Phantomescence, and is credited with the majority of the writing as well, but the new collection also sees Uncle Woe beginning to expand toward a fuller lineup with the addition of drummer Nicholas Wowk. Also credited with writing on opener “Become the Ghost,” Wowk would seem to have recorded his own drum and percussion parts, which since Fice did likewise hints toward a made-in-quarantine process behind the album as a whole, but somehow that only seems fitting for the kind of aesthetic craft the duo are honing. Rawer in its overall production style than was the debut, Phantomescence pursues a similar course of grunge-infused cosmic doom, bringing a crunch reminiscent of YOB at Atma‘s most jagged (speaking of “shores”) to back howls that call up images of Layne Staley circa Alice in Chains‘ Facelift. It is a powerful combination across these songs, and it should be noted that just because the record is raw does not mean it can’t also create an atmosphere, which Phantomescence most certainly does in its overarching sense of decay that even the track titles seem to acknowledge: “Become a Ghost” and “On Laden Shores” on side A and “Lucid Degrees of Autoscopic Ruin” and “Map of Dead Stars” on side B.
Some keywords: ghost, laden, ruin, dead. These are clues to the ambience that makes Uncle Woe even heavier than simple tones ever could. That’s not to take away from the performance aspect of the songs, since “Become the Ghost” establishes early both the crushing aspects of the record to unfold and the progression Fice has undertaken as a vocalist — he is audibly more confident in his layering here with a debut behind him — but Phantomescence is more about the consuming entirety of the sound rather than the elements that comprise it; all the pieces Fice and Wowk bring to the proceedings being put to serve the expression of the album itself. Indeed, even Wowk‘s drums seem to be positioned in the mix to feed into the mood, so that they are not just about grounding Fice‘s riffs, but also adding to the tumult.
This can be heard as “Become the Ghost” lumbers past its midpoint, before it moves into its extended, dreamy solo and back for a massively chugging apex to finish out — the lead track essentially building the world in which the rest of what follows will take place in terrestrial and ethereal terms alike. “On Laden Shores” begins quieter and as it’s more than twice as long would of course have more space in which to flourish and unfold gradually, but maybe the more apt comparison point for “Become the Ghost” is its side B counterpart “Lucid Degrees of Autoscopic Ruin.” The title references autoscopy, which is the act of seeing through another perspective, and if that’s what’s happening across the 6:46 leadoff to the second half of Phantomescence, the feel mournful in Pallbearer-style form, but again, rawer and made Uncle Woe‘s own like the influences noted above. The emotionality on naked display is more in focus through “Lucid Degrees of Autoscopic Ruin” than anywhere else on Phantomescence, including “Become the Ghost,” but it’s the patience with which it’s delivered that most ties it to the finale in “Map of Dead Stars.”
To be sure, “On Laden Shores” caps the first half of the LP with its own vision of melancholic lumbering — and when it comes right down to it, it’s not like Our Unworn Limbs was bouncing off the walls either; these are relative degrees we’re talking about — but it becomes a question of tipping balances in Uncle Woe‘s sound. The fullness of lurch in “On Laden Shores” indeed invokes waves, and its melody carried by the vocals complements early while giving way to more guttural roars later, only to drift into silence at the end. “A Map of Dead Stars,” meanwhile, also begins with a quiet guitar figure, but follows a more patient path to its moment of surge, and much as “Become the Ghost” informs Phantomescence as a whole, so too does that opening of “A Map of Dead Stars” affect what comes after, which wants nothing for heft.
The wistful last solo, the relatively brief stretch of melodic vocals and gritty wailing and the outright pummeling march that answers it to round out “A Map of Dead Stars” — with feedback giving way to a from-the-ground-up build that pays off in noisier fashion than anything preceding — are a fitting and efficient summary of Uncle Woe‘s evolution in progress, and there is nothing to indicate that the development between their 2019 offering and this one will stop here. If anything, the work Uncle Woe put into Phantomescence reaffirms the potential of their debut while standing as an accomplished stride forward from it. As to where anything might lead, I couldn’t and wouldn’t say, but what’s happening in these songs is Uncle Woe‘s continued discovery — and Fice‘s continued discovery — and refinement of their own creative process. The individual sensibility that emerges from Phantomescence is not to be taken lightly, and neither is the movement toward a complete, stage-ready lineup of the band. Again, unclear future (to put it mildly), but such multifaceted growth is rare.
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Tags: Bancroft, Canada, Ontario, Packard Black Productions, Phantomescence, Uncle Woe, Uncle Woe Phantomescence, Unsigned bands
