Pyrrhon (US) - Exhaust Digipak CD
PYRRHON WAS STUCK in mid-2023 after prolonged global unrest and personal changes. In 2020, their album 'Abscess Time' arrived at the heart of the pandemic. In 2021, they went on one tour at the height of the Delta COVID wave before clubs started shutting down again. In 2022, they played a single show. In 2023, they had only three songs written for a fifth album.
The band decided to shake things loose with a retreat. Armed with their instruments, psychedelic mushrooms, and a few bad movies, they rented a cabin in rural northeastern Pennsylvania in May 2023. The decision worked. The creative energy surged, and the band wrote three new songs over the weekend.
Pyrrhon, which formed in New York City in 2008 when most of the band was in college, has always been classified as technical death metal for convenience. Their music, however, defies convention—even in the anything-goes world of 21st-century metal. Pyrrhon's music contains the musical prowess of Gorguts’s Obscura, the unrelenting rhythmic pummeling of Big Black, and the experimentation of free jazz. Moore’s lyrics - a combination of poetry and flash prose - are a welcome relief in an art form awash in stale cliches and genre tropes. Pyrron’s jarring and complex music - a true outlier when the band released their first album over a decade ago - requires attention and scrutiny, and demands replay.
Pyrrhon’s fifth album, Exhaust, is not a concept record. However, many songs touch on where we are in 2024; people are overwhelmed and unable to catch their breath. The album was initially called “Exhaustion,” but drummer Steve Schwegler noticed recurring imagery about cars slowly degrading from overuse - an apt metaphor for an album exploring perpetual burnout. On a larger level, Exhaust is about things - machines or humans - being ground down and never recovering. It also hints at the exhaustion of staying sane in a world overrun with digital devices, social media, holograms, and artificial intelligence.
Exhaust was recorded with longtime Pyrrhon producer Colin Marston in December 2023 at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves studios in Queens, shortly before the studio closed.
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