For many a year a bands’ “extremity” was defined by how offensive their lyrics were, how unintelligible their vocals were, how fast they could play, and for how long. But, as Tiago Moreira sagely commented in his review of the excellent Artificial Brain album Labyrinth Constellation these are finally different and special days for Death Metal. Death Metal lives in Interesting Times.
With The Mother Of Virtues (Relapse), New York’s Pyrrhon have found a way to meld and then go beyond the warped, technical dissonance of Gorguts, Ulcerate, Portal and Deathspell Omega to create quite possibly the most extreme and impenetrable album to date. By anyone.
Five minutes into the album, and we’ve had a minute and a half Grind/Jazz obliteration at the hands of ‘The Oracle Of Nassau’, which is the last time Pyrrhon pay any attention to “traditional” structure or definable output, and the first three minutes of ‘White Flag’, which starts with an inoffensive bass dally before sweeping off in a riot of aggression and notes from all points of the guitar necks that slows down again to tail into sub-noise via discordant jangles. And that’s just the beginning of an extraordinary album that forces re-evaluation of what can be achieved in the name of extreme music. Boundaries aren’t just pushed, they are non-existent. I don’t like, know, or get jazz, but this is surely what the most fucked-up jazz can only dream of sounding like.
The Mother Of Virtues doesn’t just challenge what is “extreme”, but calls into question whether some of what is produced is actually even music. It certainly shouldn’t be called songs. And is all the better for it.
Completely and utterly impenetrable, and not in the way Krallice or AEvangelist are, and exceptional with it. I don’t “get it”, but I don’t think I’m supposed to. I don’t think the point is to understand what I now imagine the soundtrack of a complete and devastating neural implosion to sound like. I think the point is to be challenged by it.
The technique of all involved is incredible as Pyrrhon deconstruct frictional technical death metal and brokenly put it back together in a consciously unnatural way as only the bass and drums retain any semblance of what we are used to, underpinning and holding everything just about together throughout tracks like the Ved Buens Ende tinged ‘Eternity In A Breath’ as if the rhythm section of a different, more “normal” band, but by the midpoint of ‘Invisible Injury’ both have detached themselves from each other, as the Underworld spills out from all parts of the band into pure extreme free-form.
The Mother Of Virtues will never be an easy listen, will never be comfortable, will always be disorientating and doesn’t so much teeter on the razors edge of insanity and genius as hurl itself from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again. But it will always be an extraordinary album.
9.5/10
STEVE TOVEY
With five full length records and over a decade of music biz experience under his belt, Glorior Belli mastermind Billy Bayou has seen his share of ups and downs. Hailing from France, one of the greatest places in the world to find exciting and challenging art, Bayou’s music blends black metal atmospherics with down-to-earth rock ‘n’ roll grit to produce a quite unique blend. He took the time to chat with Ghost Cult, and explain a few things about his personal connection to the blues, the band’s recent move to a new label, and the French black metal scene.
It is said that isolation breeds creativity. As much as a platitude this is, Ulcerate’s case seems to help it regain some credibility. Although spawned and based in picturesque New Zealand, the brooding metal trio has a penchant for sonically summoning dark, twisted worlds that reflect and pass judgment on the rotten core of humanity—hardly a mental picture that fits the towering-mountains-and-serene-meadows imagery present in the imagination of many a LotR (Lord of the Rings) fan. This natural inclination towards and ability to clearly convey such depressing negativity doesn’t come easily to most bands, let alone one dwelling within the dream retirement country for many. This creativity is of a virulent nature; one that births realms so displeasing in any ordinary person’s view that it is shunned by the masses and revered only by those who have stared into the abyss for too long. From within the murky darkness of pessimism, drummer Jamie Saint Merat surfaces briefly to speak to Dane Prokofiev about the theme of Vermis (Relapse), his philosophy of the human condition and more.
12 years since their last full-length, Gorguts have seen fit to grace us mere mortals with a new album. Has it been worth the wait? In short, oh yes, yes it has. Densely technical and chaotic, Colored Sands (Season Of Mist) is as punishing as it is rewarding. Whilst it’s far from being a catchy album, Gorguts never sacrifice riffs in favour of technicality, and their music never comes across as “technical for the sake of it”. The opening riff on ‘An Ocean Of Wisdom’, for example, is absolutely monumental, and almost hummable, before dissolving into atonal “melodies” that any fan of Deathspell Omega should be more than familiar with. The fluidity of Gorguts’ compositions on this album is astounding, flowing between eerie atmospherics, dense, rumbling riffs, and mind-bending technicality with ease that would make lesser musicians green with envy.
Imagine a lone asteroid floating about aimlessly in deep space. Giant, writhing worms dwell beneath its thin crust of rock and dirty ice, and these gargantuan non-arthropods occasionally pop up to the desolate surface to soak in the UV rays emanating from nearby stars. Then, when it’s feeding time, they seek out and cannibalize one another. The resulting cacophony of tortured, inhuman shrieks set against the depressive backdrop of the vast and cold void would be akin to how Vermis—the Relapse debut and fourth full-length album from New Zealander experimental death metallers Ulcerate—sounds like.
I’m not sure what it is, but France seems to be the “trendy” country for metal these days. Gojira and Deathspell Omega are the most recognizable but there are plenty of quality bands coming out of France. The latest to grace my ears is Erlen Meyer and their self-titled album. And they don’t sound anything like Gojira or Deathspell Omega. Trying to pinpoint who they do sound like is rather difficult.