Trivia / Phil Tougas

• Approval of God: Is aware that this page exists and was apparently impressed when its existence was first brought to his attention (aside from several minor errors).
• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: He is involved in TEN projects, plus his boutique label/distro Productions TSO. That is not a typo. Of these, only First Fragment and Funebrarum tour, Chthe'ilist, VoidCeremony, and D.D.T. are fest bands that play less than ten shows per year (and the latter can barely be called an active band), while the rest are studio-only, which somewhat explains how he is able to juggle all of them, but it is still an incredible number either way. Zealotry wound up being the first inevitable casualty; even getting all the members into a room to rehearse was a Sisyphean ordeal (and caused what would have been their first show in 2016 to fall through), and between the sheer continued difficulty of getting everyone together for practice and the fact that First Fragment and Funebrarum had stacked schedules, he opted to step down and gave the spot to Ray Brouwer. He was also effectively out of Serocs by the time that The Phobos/Deimos Suite was recorded and did it as a swansong, and he was an Ascended Extra in Equipoise and ducked out the minute that it became clear that touring was inevitable, and Sanjay Kumar was more than happy to pick up his leads and get some extra shred time.
• Development Hell: Atramentus has existed since 2012, and Phil had Stygian completely written by the end of 2013, but a combination of Phil not having a full band and refusing to record it until he did (particularly drums, as programming them was a hard "no" from him), other projects taking precedence, limited availability of his bandmates once he did have a full lineup, and their lack of a label dragged things out for years until he finally got it out in August of 2020. Subverted with Gloire Eternelle (the second First Fragment full-length) and the followup to Le Dernier Crepuscle; while the former took almost three years to make and the latter will likely not be out until at least sometime within the early 2020s, it is more just due to everyone taking their time with the songwriting and being choosy about what they keep. He said as much about Gloire Eternelle; to paraphrase Phil, the release timeframe was roughly "it's going to come out when it comes out", and while they aimed to finish it and have it released within a reasonable timeframe, they all utterly refused to rush it or enter the studio before they were completely satisfied with the material.
• Promoted Fanboy: He was a huge fan of Cosmic Atrophy, Funebrarum, and VoidCeremony well before he joined either act.
• Refitted for Sequel: Several times.
  • Several songs on Serocs' And When the Sky Was Opened contain scrapped riffs from the writing sessions for First Fragment's Dasein that Phil didn't want to abandon, namely "Itami".
  • Dicymerian started out as material he wrote for the third Eternity's End and took with him once he quit the band.
• Troubled Production: First Fragment's Dasein had to clear a lot of hurdles before and after its release. It probably would have been out earlier in the decade had Phil Boucher not quit to join Beyond Creation, but logistical difficulties and the theft of Mathieu Marcotte's laptop with all of the files on it (as he recorded the guitars and bass and helped master the album) delayed things further, as did the search for a session drummer (though they did manage to snag Troy Fullerton to do the album), and once the album was finally done in the summer of 2015 (having started in 2013), it sat around waiting for Unique Leader Records to give it a release date.

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