You cannot always expect the major labels to issue interesting, fresh music with new ideas to offer. But you can always trust Musical Chairs to at least point you in the direction of where you can find some! Gary Lee checks out the new offering by Pyramids, released this month by Profound Lore Records.
Music to melt to, that's it. That's all I need to describe A Northern Meadow by Pyramids. Pyramids are a Texas based experimental metal band. They are essentially one big stewing pot of sounds and styles; crushing, oppressive, atmospheric sounds of doom mixed with the high end shrills and 'evil' scales of black metal. Throw in some dreamy shoe gaze, some avant garde sounds and ambient soundscapes and you have Pyramids. This musical stew is then served up in one gloop so thick that it is difficult to tell where one influence ends and another begins. Right from the outside, this oceanic tide of music swept me up and I drifted in it, drowned in it and melted in it. Whichever metaphor you use, at an atomic pleasantly time consuming level, I was consumed by this music.
The album opens with In Perfect Stillness, I've Only Found Sorrow. A high end, highly polished, fuzzed up blackgaze track, with a slow methodical doom style beat and some beautifully haunting vocal work that reminds me of Thom Yorke; pained, rich and with a discordant melody. The song meanders along on its melancholy like a lost piece of driftwood almost melding with The Earth Melts Into Red Gashes Like The Mouths of Whales, the next track on the album. This track also carries on along the same motif, slow and methodical versus dreamy and haunting. The repetition of vision however, makes this track no less worthy of your time.
The Substance of Grief is Not Imaginary is a very apt title for this particular track. It is the track where the melancholy of the previous songs 'wins' and the dreams become nightmarish. The song itself is slightly more black metal in style, although still with those beautifully sung clean vocals. However, there is an undercurrent of industrial style distortion and sampling that adds an unsettling 'crunch' to this track. Theres a few elements of what seem like screamed vocals, although they could well be filtered spoken words, I am unsure, either way it does little to settle the imagination. A fantastically evocative song.
Back to the cleaner style of otherworldly climbs comes Indigo Birds which is one of the longest tracks on the album at just short of 8 minutes. I often feel that the longer tracks are the measuring sticks for bands that have a slightly more eclectic style and this one does not fall short. Another well layered track that has plenty of interesting peaks and folds to wander around in. There's a spot around the 4:50 mark where most of the instruments drop out and everything gets a little harp-y. I'm not sure what exactly is making these sounds and it could well be synthesised (if so, great, I love to see bands reach for things outside their given 'genre'). But I love this section, its a prefect moment to exhale and take stock of the music before it, to ponder where this song might be going and where the other songs have taken, or will take you.
Although, I hope you used that moment to do plenty of exhaling, because I Have Four Sons, All Named for Men We Lost to War cuts through the serenity with a gut punch of doom metal stylings. A gut punch so furious it carrys through into I'm Sorry, Goodbye which sounds as meloncholic as its title suggests it should.
The final 1-2 punch on this album comes in the form of My Father, As Tall As Goliath which brings back some of the lighter atmospheric work and harmonies, and Consilience which probably fits the bill of being the 'exhibition song', it shows a little of everything that the album has already shown, but does so in new and interesting ways.
If I was to criticise this album I would say that it is difficult to take in a piecemeal way. It's definitely the sit down and listen to it from beginning to end type of album which, in some scenarios and for some types of audiences, may make it hard to access. I would also advise that this album is not going be for everyone but it is so well layered and passionately crafted it certainly deserves its place. In fact, just for the creative progression bands and releases like this bring, I am in love with this release and what it may do for its respective genres.
Find the album here
Article By Gary Lee (@Thewheelbear)
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