In terms of metal, Scandinavia steals all the attention from their European neighbors to the south. While other European countries have fully embraced the genre (I don't think you can walk two blocks in Italy without getting hit by some tattooed rocker's wallet chain.), most seem to be happy emulating what they hear up north or across the pond.  Germany, however, has always forged its own weapons with metal, instilling a teutonic, kraut-rock attention to detail that has lifted bands like SODOM, KREATOR and DESTRUCTION to the top of the thrashened heap. PHANTOM CORPORATION is clearly a part of this pedigree- the production is tight, the playing is tight, the compositions are even tighter and the whole thing is tighter than a virgin's...well, you know what. "Fallout" is the first official album from the Germans, even though they've been around for almost a decade.  It's a muscular, confident and- yes- tight version of the teutonic thrash that has made Germany an international heavyweight in the world of metal.

"Dead Inside" starts the album hard right out of the gate. The band dabbles in this unapologetic classic German thrash that pummels even as they dip in out of death and hardcore. Leif Jensen's screechy growl is just hardcore-adjacent, with enough old-man energy to avoid falling down that sub-generic hole. "Left to Fate" is when the mushrooms start to kick in.  Marc-Andree Dieken's drumming- a highlight of the album- sounds like an 18-wheeler barreling down a twenty-degree hill, brakes burning, tires leaving streaks of deathly black.  The toms sound as if they were recorded in a tomb and the cymbals sound like collapsed lungs; a splash during the breakdowns make for an evil garnish for this putrid salad of disgust and anger.

Third song "Gridlock" is a personal favorite.  It starts off, like all of the songs on this album, with the pedal all the way to the metal.  It's a fucking punk rock fist to the face, the sound of that 18-wheeler running straight into the teenage girl trying to escape the masked killer from sleepaway camp. The dissonant breakdown about two minutes into the song is an  early ACCEPT-like groove that transports you back into the world of those mushrooms, before transitioning to a metal-march of victory to the disparate corners of the world. The guitar work from Philipp Schulte and Arne Berents are brutally confident.  They aren't flashy players, but they are uber-competent, and the guitar tones are organically ugly, particularly on the solos. "Alongside Hell" carries all of these qualities towards the mid-section of the record. It's a quick, relentless two minutes in the passenger seat of the truck.  At about 30 seconds into "Vortex of Torment," there is a single feedbacked tone that erupts from the speaker and hangs there for another ten before the band breaks into the main fist-pumping groove. It's the most KREATOR or SODOM-like song on the album, alternating between boot-stomping mid-tempo teutonic metal to straight up German thrash.  "Terminal Darkness" is an acoustic interlude, which is pretty much the only time the band lets up for the entire album, a kind of sonic bookmark between what would traditionally be the A side and the B side of the album.

In that sense, the B side of the album isn't so much a mirror to the A side as it is a variation on a theme.  The songs tighten up a bit, in terms of melody, as there is less experimentation and more of an attempt to create compact and dense nuggets of death that will successfully fill up a set-list.  This isn't to take away from the legitimacy of the songs- "Spiritual Arsonists" and "Excessive Force" continue what the band does best- but after some time it's hard to distinguish one song from the next. All that being said, PHANTOM CORPORATION does an exceptional job of taking the teutonic metal we all know so well and mashing it up with elements of death metal and hardcore. If the band can tap into the energy of songs like "Gridlock," then there's no telling where the metallic future will take these champions of German metal.