Review by Daniel for Phantomsmasher - Atomsmasher (2001)

I have to admit that legendary underground metal producer James Plotkin’s Phantomsmasher project (or Atomsmasher as it was called at the time of this release before being legally forced to change the name) is one that I’ve been giving a wide birth for several years now after hearing snippets of it while exploring the monthly playlists for The Horde. Those experiences usually left me wondering what in the actual fuck I was hearing & being baffled as to how an artist like this one was attached to the clan, let alone metal in general. But this cybergrind deep dive has led me to finally bite the bullet which was an imposing prospect to say the least so I made the conscious effort to clear my mind of any preconceptions prior to taking the plunge. While doing so I reminded myself of other Plotkin projects like Old, Khanate or even some of his solo production work that I’ve quite enjoyed over the years to give this music a fair chance to engage with me.

Despite all of that mental preparation though, I challenge even the most well-informed listener not to find “Atomsmasher” to be one of the most bizarre pieces of art they’ve ever experienced. Plotkin has become known for giving the musical boundaries a good ol’ stretch over the years but he completely decimates them here with an album that pushes the definition of what can be considered to be music to breaking point. Is this cybergrind? Absolutely not. Despite the use of cut-up & heavily effected blast-beats (from Burnt By The Sun/Human Remains/Discordance Axis/Exit-13/Municipal Waste/Melt-Banana skins man Dave Witte no less) & psychotically screamed (& generally ridiculous) vocal shenanigans, there isn’t really any trace of grindcore here. Hell, there’s nothing even remotely like metal if I’m being honest! Metal is built on heavy guitars & riffs but there’s next to no guitars included on this record. To my ears it’s a combination of avant-garde experimental music, electronic music, psychedelia & noise; a concoction that sits far closer to the electronic & avant-garde genres than it does to even the more ambitious metal subgenres like avant-garde metal. It’s really pretty hard to fathom how someone can have conjured up this racket within the confines of their brain, so much so that I’d suggest that they actually haven’t & have simply laid down tracks until they’d created this cacophony out of pure chance.

That’s not to say that there’s no value in this album though. No, don’t misunderstand me on that point because, despite my non-commital rating, there’s only one track that I regard as being truly terrible (see “Skitchy” which provides no value whatsoever & is the very definition of filler). The majority of the remaining tracks can be a bit of a struggle though if I’m being honest. There are really only two “songs” that I achieve much connection with, the first being the superbly ambient “Gilgamesh” which is the best piece of work on the tracklisting by a fair margin & the second being the lengthiest inclusion in “Skull Shot” which takes the listener in a number of different directions & may not always be successful but ultimately saw me buying into its strange & mysterious charms. You see, “Atomsmasher” sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before & it should be commended for that but the question has to be asked as to whether I can say that I genuinely WANT to hear it again. I’d suggest that the answer is no, at least for the moment. And I also have to ask what benefit a record like this one brings to your average metalhead’s lives as the cybergrind tag is so fucking misguided it’s not funny.

At the end of the day, I think there will always be a market for consciously silly & ridiculous music like Phantomsmasher have produced here. I’d say that market would be the same people that seem to rate artists like Naked City or Painkiller so highly as there are some similarities here, only they’re taken in a much more electronic direction. As for our Metal Academy regulars, I’ve got my doubts about the appeal of a record like this one. One thing’s for sure though, if it is going to offer any sort of pleasure it’d be to those more inclined towards The Infinite than The Horde.