The French band Phazm are definitely an acquired taste. Their sound is an unusual combination of black metal and swaggering rock and roll. Their music has a lot of traditional metal grooves and melodies and a decent amount of hooks. You'll even hear a few blistering guitar solos that you won't hear on many black metal influenced albums. They also incorporate acoustic instruments into some of the songs.
Probably the hardest thing to adjust to on Antebellum Death 'N Roll is the vocals. They aren't really the true black metal rasp, but a strange combination of rasping, gurgling and singing. It is tolerable on the intense tracks that really groove, but sounds out of place and affected on the slower songs.
This is truly a diverse CD. Phazm throws in everything from black metal to death metal to southern rock to thrash to traditional metal to progressive metal. It's a little uneven in spots, but there are more hits than misses. This is a also a dual disc that includes a DVD with a 2006 concert.
