Existem Are Just Getting Started on Phoenix

It makes me feel super-great when bands I feature in the Unsigned and Unholy column continue making great music well into the future. Validation! More aural goodness for my earholes! And your earholes! Everyone wins.

When I first wrote about Existem in 2012 I compared them to The Ocean, Textures and Opeth. Their new EP Phoenix, streaming now on their Bandcamp, is so much more, altogether a shade mellower than any of those three yet somehow more dynamic. The album’s title track finds them stretching out into gorgeous, ethereal landscapes, and “Memento Mori” borders on alt-metal with its simple mid-tempo riffs and straightforward vocal approach before taking a left turn into a jammy instrumental section with a searing guitar solo. EP-closer “Above or Below” might be the band’s best song yet, with its David Gilmour-esque, delay-soaked, rhythmic lead guitar line and the opposite of good cop / bad cop vocals: clean-sung verses that explode into Akerfledtian growled rage when the chorus hits. And lots more… the track is a 10-minute adventure.

Check it out in full below and buy it at Bandcamp for whatever price you feel like. Tell me if I’m crazy for thinking this band is phenomenal or if I’m onto something.