Salt comes after Sand for the second full length from these Swedes, Pyramido. By the name and the cover, a stoner version of doom I guessed is the order of the day despite the presence of ex members of Burst and Crowpath and current members or Murinus in their ranks and certainly it starts thick and heavy enough with 'Walking Blind'; a big slab riff crawling forward with a seeming determination to crush you. Then after a couple of bars or so we get the howled, strangled hardcore styled vocals from ex-Burst man Ronnie Källbäck and we're off.
The problem is it kind of ends up as wallpaper for me by the time ten minutes or so of this and 'Left To Rot' have passed. It's a case of there not being anything wrong here but neither is there anything to pull you in from the off. The vocals are not helping if I'm honest (which I'm trying to be of course); despite their tone and pedigree and that they sound really pissed off about something, not even the odd phrase is audible to me, no lyrics are provided and they are also pretty unvaried in tone which trends to plateau any potential impact of the songs. Having said that not much in the riffs hooks me in either. It is a shame as these lads are clearly going for it with the intense conviction you'd expect and it's a nice solid wall of sound.
Then after these two openers, however, we get the delicate and ominous moodswing of 'Saltstoder'; a short instrumental which kind of recalls such moments as NIN In A Lonely Place and the progressive roots of these guys start to show. With perfect insistence it peels away the wallpaper and invites you inside the hidden room. This seems to be shattered by 'Onward' but that too soon hits the spot with the kind of heavy, determined groove that Neurosis live and breathe and Salt takes on a new face altogether: Intriguing and rather mesmerizing.
'Hollow Words' changes up again, a far more angry beast with some nicely used dual vocals adding that variation and flavour so it comes across as a kind of grindcore doom thing with even some black metal spice creeping in, which kind of reminds me of Crowpath's approach in places and nicely cleans out my skull. Cool stuff.
When the closer 'Dr Milton (Destroyer of Worlds)' edges back to the rather unspectacular sound of the two openers, though, I'm still left with favourable memories.
For me Pyramido are best when the stoner doom is parked and their hardcore or post hardcore and progressive influences are allowed free-er reign. I also as a listener wonder if more variation is needed in the vocals like the approach on Hollow Words as looking back it's the very well written and played instrumental passages which I'm pulled back to again and again.
Worth keeping an eye on though certainly because with the talent in their ranks and half of this album there must be more and better to come.
http://www.pyramido.org
http://www.myspace.com/pyramidodoom
Gizmo
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