Phantoms vs Fire
Modern Monsters 1 and 2
SCORE: 7.3 honest trailers out of 10
In his new album, PvF succeeds in conveying a sense of realization and triumph, even if its gravitas may feel like too much. It would seem that, the more subdued it is, the more effective PvF's work becomes.
PvF continues the ambitious project he started with last years's My Mind as Your Amusement Park: a series of albums all tied together by an intricate story. The previous album was an ambient epic that felt melancholic as well as eerie (think of Akira Yamaoka’s work for the Silent Hill games), and in Modern Monsters 1 and 2 -the second installment of this saga- the artist has decided to add orchestral instrumentation to his mostly electronic pieces.
Horns blast the listeners with a deafening metallic thunder, the strings stab incessantly with every piercing note, and the organ will drown everyone as the sustained notes grow louder and louder. There’s also an assortment of beats as well, and they anxiously morph in each song, going from subtle accents to martial assaults. Thiago (Phantoms vs Fire’s mastermind) is hellbent on throwing everything in our direction in the hopes of making us feel something, at the expense of coming off a little manipulative.
The percussive elements are actually the best part of the album as they do inject the songs with energy and aggression, thus distinguishing them from MMAYAP's chilling and more delicate nature, but their use is not limited to express those emotions alone. Thiago shows a very competent sense of dynamics and he is able to provide different moods through a distinctive process of mutation that he imposes upon his beats, and they give each song a unique feel within the context of the album.
There are moments reminiscent of M83’s rocking electric bliss ("The Law") and even Mogwai (the last minutes of "Necronomicon"), but Thiago’s work still holds a candle to Cliff Martinez's tense and repetitive arpeggios; however, the way they synch with the programmed drums explodes with unnerving tension. These are the truly overwhelming and grandiose moments during Modern Monsters, more so than the quasi-baroque passages. It seems that, the more subdued it is, the more effective PvF's work becomes.
One needs to be aware that, at the very least, a good 80% of the album gives a persistent blockbuster thriller vibe. "The Ghost-Eater" even has the same feel as "Lux Aeterna" by Kronos Quartet (you know, that Requiem for a Dream song). The exaggerated sense of epicness and gravitas some pieces are endowed with, have a paradoxical effect, as their seriousness may come off as imposing and cheesy at the same time. This happens quite a lot throughout the album: depending on your mood, the staccato strings, the bombastic horns and choral arrangements -along with the over the top delivery- may come across either as too self-indulgent or as genuine displays of sheer intensity.
This fixation on the epic and heroic is by design, though. In this part of the story arc, our main character is no longer a slave to the will of those unseen and unknown forces that haunted her/his every step on My Mind as Your Amusement Park. Thiago succeeds in conveying a sense of realization and triumph, but it feels like too much too quick: its impact decreases the more these attributes get used, and they are used a lot. Perhaps reducing the tracklist or splitting this into two separate albums would have kept this from happening.
Things start to pick up after "Pharaoh" since the pieces begin to flow more naturally, as now they have severed ties with the hyperbolic fanfares and choirs. This does not imply that MM loses its edge; it just shows that Thiago has finally found a way keep the combination of orchestral and electronic elements more balanced. In a way, this last set of songs feels more connected to MMAYAP, but Thiago manages to project a different emotional state.
Even if some of the new components don't fully work, that doesn't take away from the fact that this is a highly ambitious album; Thiago took a huge risk in order to differentiate this album from his previous effort, which in turn was also a direct rejection of what came before. If we were to listen to his releases on Blackjack Illuminist Records it would be surprising to know that those three albums came from the same person; this penchant for variety is a great asset for an artist to have, and Thiago has proven to be quite the chameleon.
