Album Review: Φως (Phos) – I Am the Light for #MetalChronicles

Band: Φως (Phos)
Title: I Am the Light
Label: Hellenic Metal World
Release date: November 20th, 2025
Country: Greece
Format reviewed: High-Quality Digital Recording

Album Review: Φως (Phos) – I Am the Light for #MetalChronicles via Hellenic Metal World by Sílvia

Athanasios is the man behind Phos, he does everything in this debut album: he plays all the instruments, does the vocals, writes the lyrics… Maybe some of you know him from Svet, his solo Atmospheric Black Metal project, and in case you don’t, I highly recommend you to check his debut album “The Truth” from 2022.

But now, let me tell you about Phos, the new project by Athanasios. The 9 songs in “I Am the Light” are highly atmospheric, he uses repetitive tremolo riffs to create hypnotic passages, and guitars provide great melodies also. Drums are usually played at fast tempos, sometimes hitting as if there was no tomorrow, with a big use of cymbals too. There’s just a few keyboard notes here and there, to point out a special moment in a song, with more atmosphere, like a call of attention…

There’s place for some guitar leads that bring a bit of light to these dark songs, like in “The Awakening”, but guitars are mostly playing sharp and icy riffs that permeate your skin and freeze your blood. “Trapped Within the Flesh” is an extremely cold track, with those pulverising fast drums and the metallic sound of guitar, and vocals performing some sick shrieks and screams, besides its usual harshness.

This album clocks around 50 minutes, it’s divided into 9 tracks, being the last one, “I am the Light”, the longest (more than 11 minutes long) and with a more restrained tempo. It’s alluring and hypnotic, and near the end it explodes and drags you along with it: drums running at full throttle and guitars swirling in a final repetitive riff, leaving you mentally drained. A spectacular ending.

The artwork, done by Dorothe Wouters (Darkmoon-Art), is an image that says a lot: a dark silhouette of an eagle elevating from a dark forest, and going towards the light above. I think it can be translated into the ascent of the self towards the brighter side of life, of human being… attending to the lyrics, that talk about inner struggles, and also about the darkness, the pain and the slavery feeling to this world we live in. Like, we are chained to our fears, but our mind can dream of liberation.

An awesome debut album that I recommend not to skip.  8,5/10

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8,5/10  To Greatness and Glory!
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