Music for a Middle Eastern Dive Bar

Los Angeles’ PHILM are a progressive rock/metal band comprising Civil Defiance’s Gerry Nestler on guitar and vocals, War’s Francisco “Pancho” Tomaselli on bass guitar and a promising unknown named Dave Lombardo on drums. On their second full-length album, Fire From The Evening Sun, PHILM head east, exploring mystical, ancient textures while keeping one foot firmly—and perhaps detrimentally—in the province of rock, thrash, and metal.

Fire From The Evening Sun does not begin auspiciously. “Train” chugs in with a cheesy “train sound” intro that would have been hackneyed fifty years ago. PHILM then barrel through some sort of dive bar rock-blues that is almost unsettlingly generic. Nestler croons, sings, shouts, and screams, but the music only serves to expose just how unfit his reedy, thin voice is for this sort of suggestive, macho sound. “Train” is confusing and unsatisfying enough to make one wonder whether Fire From The Evening Sun is actually a serious release.

Fortunately, things improve, and fast. “Fire from the Evening Sun” launches a middle section that incorporates Eastern textures and themes with an open-minded aplomb. “Lady of the Lake” kicks off with a superb groove, featuring fast, driving syncopations from Lombardo and Tomaselli, with Nestler sprinkling Middle East-ish chords like so much cumin over the top of the composition. With the exception of the sludgy, thrashy “Fanboy,” the middle songs each feature some measure of Eastern influence, along with many American-style rock and metal passages, including thrash runs, guitar solos, desert rock stomps, and the like.

While PHILM certainly generate some atmosphere, there is a tangible lack of commitment to the concept that hurts Fire From The Evening Sun. Sometimes the Eastern sounds and themes are absorbing, while other times they sound provisional, lacking reference and depth, both lyrically and musically. The rockier parts, though generic, just sound so much more convincing. It is hard to give PHILM a pass when an album like Virus’ The Agent that Shapes the Desert is out there, not to mention the works of Nile, Om and Sun City Girls, among others—each of these offering fully-invested, fearless visions of the worldly territory Fire From The Evening Sun begins only tentatively to explore.

PHILM, however, do keep an ace up their sleeve. Closer “Corner Girl” effectively mines a vein of Mediterranean outsider metal-jazz that fans of Ephel Duath and Obsidian Kingdom will recognize immediately. Lovely and morose, “Corner Girl” is a bittersweet stroll among the musical stones left unturned by Fire From The Evening Sun. PHILM are an interesting group, even independent of Lombardo’s stature. However, their experiments would benefit from bolder jaunts into new territory—from a partial unlearning of the thrash, metal, and hard rock roots that keep Fire From The Evening Sun tethered uncomfortably and ambiguously to familiar sounds.