After first meeting on a station platform in their native New York in 2008 and becoming a band, Pyrrhon have gone on to release this, their first album. We’re promised a “nightmarish blend of clanging death metal with surreal psychedelic elements, jazz rhythms and delirious storytelling”.
It’s been a while since I heard anything as overtly dark as this. It’s not Black, but rather a series of ambient and sometimes sludgy Death Metal compositions. There’s a strong air of Ephel Duath in its discordance and irregularity. “An Excellent Servant But A Terrible Master” sounds like someone has had a rough hand in life. In fact it’s as happy as Anaal Nathrakh or Axis of Perdition but without being industrial or from any kind of mysterious underworld. This is a distorted version of a very grim and harsh reality.
The irregular movement, the sound distortions and the jazz-orientated Metal sound of “New Parasite”, the opening track, have that Ephel Duath feel. The impression to begin with is of someone walking round a crumbling room in a stupor. The horror kicks in. It’s deliberate and discordant. Each note is aimed at discomfort, but there is still a musical pattern. The vocalist agonises. It’s retro as if Jimi Hendrix is playing a guest role. There’s no feel good factor about this. The dark journey continues with “Glossolalian”. Like Ephel Duath again, there’s an endlessness about it. The horror just takes on different forms. Yet in spite of the ghastliness, I found myself taking in the scene like an old friend. It may not be easy listening, but as an exercise in Technical Death Metal it’s first class and certainly has impact. The story just goes on like a series of unfinished movements. Next is “Idiot Circles”. The drum pounds ponderously while the colour – grey and white but no more – comes from the persistent guitar. It’s permanently oppressive. Mid-paced to this point, it slows down and enters a deeper, sludgier phase of Death Metal. Deathly Doom meets experimentalism before it fizzles out.
“Correcting A Mistake” is like a short interlude. The force and angst levels are stepped up. The atmosphere is as ever bleak and harsh. The music matches a grim story. The harshness of “Gamma Knife” leads this time to nightmarish minimalism before the agony and aggression intensify once more. There’s a reminder of Mayhem in the dull insistence which marks the start of the curiously titled “The Architect Confesses (Spittlestrand Hair)” but there’s then a return to the by now familiar mix of Metal jazziness and Technical Death Metal. The vocalist sounds more desperate. The guitars wander off dreamily and in their own way. It starts to get heavier as if a fire has been fuelled. The confusion is such that there’s a sense of control being lost, but in fact it is controlled and tight. It’s just that the reality is frightening and this is the musical reflection of it. The pace changes with the slow and creepy “Flesh Isolation Chamber”. It feels as if we’re crawling towards a pit of worms. The vocalist whispers indistinctly. The jazz style seeps through the slow and deliberate metal structure. Again superbly controlled, there’s an attempt to break loose, but it proves impossible to break free of the shackles. The mood reverts to anger, fear and complaint from the vocalist On “A Terrible Master”, as a panoply of Technical Metal blazes away in the background. The atmosphere is unforgiving. The drum sounds a terrible beat, the guitars step up ominously and for the first time on this album, almost melodiously. There’s unpleasantness in the air yet it’s impossible not to imbibe the majestic quality of the instrumental work before it disintegrates and brings this intriguing album to a close. A German-sounding voice utters the final words to sum it all up: “There is no harmony in this universe. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery, fornication and lack of order”. We’ve just heard the soundtrack.
This is an album to get into. Its finer points are to be appreciated. The atmosphere is uniformly bleak and harsh. If you were thinking of inviting some friends round for a quiet evening with cocktails, “An Excellent Servant But A Terrible Master” is best left on the shelf. My suggestion would be to forget the cocktails and concentrate instead on listening to this superb piece of dark and technical Metal.
http://www.myspace.com/pyrrhonnyc
Andrew Doherty
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