Style: dissonant death metal, mathcore, technical death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Gorguts, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chat Pile, Car Bomb, Frontierer
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 6 September 2024
“First off, fuck Elon Musk”: the opening line of Jpegmafia and Danny Brown’s instant hip-hop classic Scaring the Hoes. Pyrrhon’s lyricist and vocalist extraordinaire Doug Moore starts Exhaust similarly—albeit a tad more literarily with his characteristic blend of flash prose and Realist poetry—the first track “Not Going to Mars” is a big fuck you to Elon Musk. Who isn’t sick of his shit by now? Exhaust revolves around the theme of societal exhaustion: the inability to pay for things as basic as medical care because of the felicity of circumstance (“Strange Pains,” “Luck of the Draw”), the degradation of life for capitalist overuse (“Concrete Charlie,” “Last Gasp”), and a general dread of societal problems like social media, artificial intelligence, and constant advertisement. In an increasingly divided country and world, everybody’s stretched a little thin.
With some introspection, Pyrrhon realized this applied to them as a band, too, losing their spark in a feeling of collective dis-inspiration. Their solution was renting out a cabin with a glut of psychedelics and their instruments: the results speak for themselves. This is a band who’ve rediscovered their teenage vitality. An endless stream of contorted riffs, Exhaust is frantic and abrasive with its mix of Ad Nauseamisms, Imperial Triumphant’s jazziness, Frontierer-esque mathcore sections, and a hearty dash of The Dillinger Escape Plan in Moore’s vocals which shift from sewer-y gutturals and acerbic screams to uncanny half-clean wails. Moreover, as half of Pyrrhon is now in Scarcity, the comparisons to The Promise of Rain from earlier this year are clear, especially with regards to process. Exhaust brims with vibrant energy, overflowing with intensity of a live show. Dylan DiLella’s guitar lines are more varied than his parts on Scarcity’s opus, but several of the disorienting treble bits are translated, and there’s a blackened underpinning to the already complex dissonant and technical death metal-cum-mathcore.
At a perfectly paced thirty-eight minutes and ten tracks, Exhaust is superb to delve into ad nauseam. From the zesty guitar solos in “Not Going to Mars” and “First as Tragedy” to the breakdown in “Luck of the Draw” to the flurrying blast beats to close out the album on “Hell Medicine,” every track is insanely memorable with genuinely endless highlights. My girlfriend (who runs our social media) commented I was thrashing around too violently listening to Exhaust, and it’s definitely caused the same neck pain as a grand old time at a metal concert. I can’t help but get involved with Pyrrhon’s infectious grooves; holding down the rhythm section, Steve Schwegler (drums) and Erik Malave (bass) warp time signatures and intricate jazziness in such a way that you forget it’s absurdly complicated. The churning drumming alternates between impeccably tasteful blast beats, perfectly placed fills, and—importantly—an integration into the rest of Pyrrhon so as to operate as a seamless, squalid unit. Malave holds down the fort with an absolutely filthy bass tone straight from the vile side of NYC, and when he takes a lead like in the free jazz-esque build of the middle portion of “Stress Fractures,” Pyrrhon clearly ascends a level. The band knows his worth.
While Exhaust is paced perfectly—intermittent slower tracks providing some much needed respite from the aberrant technical death metal—I think “Out of Gas” is a clear step below the rest of Exhaust. Its slow 5/4 intro would be at home on an Imperial Triumphant track, and it builds satisfyingly to a noisy climax, but for the first couple minutes Moore’s strange clean vocals border on the weird side of hardcore (think Chat Pile), and I find his slam poetry-like delivery to be not my style. It’s appreciated that Pyrrhon lay off the throttle on occasion, though. Thankfully, not a note is amiss across Exhaust, and Colin Marston’s legendary production touches sound phenomenal, one of his best works yet. He captures the filth, the vibrancy, and injects his own characteristically creative touch to create a flawless sonic artifact, dry and clear. I couldn’t imagine anybody else capturing the end of “The Greatest City on Earth” like Marston; the whole section features Moore’s strangest, most-convincing imagery while the band precisely ramps up the chaotic heaviness, a rather insane ending for merely the third track on the album.
Pyrrhon have always had the goods—The Mother of Virtues and What Passes for Survival are absolutely essential avant-garde death metal listens—but they’ve fully hit their stride here, balancing their intricate abstractions and an addicting zest. For an album so dense, the riffs and song structures are remarkably accessible without sacrificing an ounce of challenging musicality. Shrooms and a cabin perfected Pyrrhon’s approach, and while I’m exhausted from a tough start to the semester, Exhaust is providing me with a breath of fresh air and the vivacity to persevere.
Recommended tracks: Not Going to Mars, The Greatest City on Earth, Strange Pains, Luck of the Draw, Stress Fractures, Hell Medicine
You may also like: Scarcity, Aseitas, Ad Nauseam, Weeping Sores
Final verdict: 9.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Pyrrhon is:
Erik Malave – bass guitar, backing vocals
Dylan DiLella – guitars
Doug Moore – vocals
Steve Schwegler – drums
