Pyramids - S/T
Over the next few posts I'll be taking a look at some new, noisy, weirdo metal stuff I've been digging lately.
For part one of this little series I'll be discussing the new album by Pyramids, the goofy, drony, noise band, not the screamy hardcore band.
I bet having to say that over and over is going to get real annoying, real fast for both bands.
Anyway, Pyramids probably don't need a lot of help from me to get the word out about their album. It's coming out on Hydrahead and has a whole second disk of remixes by folks like Jesu and James Plotkin, so I imagine they'll have a pretty easy time finding an audience.
Having said that, for a fairly high profile release I can't find a lot of information about them on the interweb. It's as if they dropped out of the sky. This leads me to believe they are perhaps a side project, or something along those lines, given that random bands from Texas tend not to just wind up putting out a record on Hydrahead without any viable information about them being available on the web.
Weird, huh?
Well, the weirdness suits the music. This is a WEIRD record. I mean, just look at the cover. That's fucking weird, right? So it's a definitely a weird record, but it's also a great record that, despite having it for a very short time, I have already thoroughly rocked out to. Today it was the soundtrack to putting IKEA bookcases together. Fascinating, huh?
Pyramids is, if I may make a bold statement, in effect an ambient band and a black metal band playing at the same time, often syncing up, sometimes not.
If that sounds terrible, it isn't. Hear me out.
The album starts off broad and ethereal, building up towards a pointed climax with each track (hey! Like a pyramid! I get it!). It's as if the songs on the album, many of which are fairly short bursts of energy and noise, were all designed to take whatever went before them and muddy it and complicate it just a bit. It's like the songs are in an argument with each other. Each one simultaneously reaffirms and destroys what's behind it. The ambient, melodic drones of the early tracks eventually give way to a more dissonant, but still beautiful, kind of noise, accompanied by frantic, blasting drums and double picked guitars. This is an album that really only makes sense if you listen to the whole thing, preferably in one, brain melting session.
I've already seen this record compared to Jesu, which is an easy comparison given that Jesu does one of the remixes on disc two. The comparison isn't terribly unfair, but I actually don't think Pyramids sound all that much like Jesu, if you really give them a good listen. I think a better match might be something like Velvet Cacoon. Both bands share a combination of speedy drumming, blurry guitars, and ambient drones which all kind of blend together into this beautiful muck. Other points of reference might be something like the last Wolves in the Throne Room record being played at the same time as that first Sigur Ros record, but somehow fitting together perfectly, like that stoner kid you knew in high school claimed "Dark Side of the Moon" and The Wizard of Oz did, except that this record actually works and you don't have to be baked to appreciate it.
But, hey, don't take my word for it. You can stream the whole record here.
Whatever they sound like, Pyramids have done us all a favor, I think, by pushing the envelope on what constitutes music, metal, noise, drones, etc. This is the kind of record that sets a high water mark for what bands can do with sound. I can't really recommend this enough. Go check it out.
