DISCOVERIES: PYRRHON AND GRAVEYARD

This is just another one of those “Seen and Heard” posts, collecting new and noteworthy things I came upon over the last 24 hours. I was just getting tired of that title.

PYRRHON

Last September we reported that New York’s Pyrrhon had signed a deal with Relapse Records for the release of their second album, The Mother of Virtues, which was tracked and mixed by Ryan Jones (Today is the Day, Mutilation Rites) and mastered by Colin Marston (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, Krallice). Yesterday the band disclosed the cover art for the new album, created by Caroline Harrison, and it hooked my eyes hard — really excellent.

In addition, the band premiered one of the album tracks, “Balkanized”. It’s a substantially re-worked version of a song that originally appeared on Pyrrhon’s 2012 demo. It will scramble heads, with horror-blasting roars over the top of squalling, shrieking, fret-burning guitars and a bounding rhythm section that justifies a listen all by themselves. It’s both technically impressive and thoroughly unhinged, both complex and carnivorous. And voracious, violently voracious.

The album is due on April 1 in North America and on slightly earlier dates everywhere else. It can be pre-ordered here: www.relapse.com/pyrrhon

Now, check out the song:

www.facebook.com/pyrrhonband

 

 

GRAVEYARD

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Spain’s Graveyard are one of the finest current practitioners of the primeval death metal art (I’m giving “old school” a rest). And now we have further evidence. War Anthem Records has released a limited-edition 7″ vinyl split by Graveyard and another stupendous death metal band, Sweden’s Entrails, and yesterday I heard Graveyard’s track — “Silent Whispers of the Graveless”.

It goes back and forth, alternately casting a pall of bleak doom and devastation and then kicking into a romping charge, throwing needling riffs and booming drums straight at your cranium, while the vocalist utters monstrous proclamations in a hoarse howl. The guitars rumble and smoke like a busted muffler (I’m giving “chainsaw” a rest) and the tumult is pierced by a reverberating, spitfire solo. Very nice.

The album is available via War Anthem or by messaging the band (the e-mail can be found here).

https://www.facebook.com/deathmetalgraveyard/

xx