Caustic. adjective
- able to burn or corrode organic tissue by chemical action.
Used medicinally, a caustic agent works through destruction. Either by removing dead tissue or coagulation through necrosis to stop bleeding. Whether healing or decomposition, so many of life’s processes are entwined with death. Out of suffering growth. The music of Pyrrhon is a steel wool for the soul. Offering purification through abrasion and scouring.
Pyrrhon are a death metal quartet based in Brooklyn, New York. They combine the aggression of dissonant death metal with a jazz like ethos. Embracing both technicality and fluidity in freeform expression. It’s creative chaos and an intensely intimate listening experience. They also just kind of rock. Their albums have plenty of crunchy riffs, opportunities to headbang, and generally thrash around. Vocalist Doug Moore oscillates between cavernous growls and banshee screams. They display elements of avant death weirdness like Imperial Triumphant or Ad Nauseum, but also present veins of noise rock à la KEN mode or Chat Pile.
I was able to speak with Pyrrhon about their origins as a band, their new album Exhaust, and the relationship between art and music.
‘The band formed 16 years ago when Dylan and I [Doug] were in college, and initially played a fairly conventional style of technical death metal informed by Suffocation, Atheist, and so forth. After Erik joined about a year later, we decided to head in a more idiosyncratic direction that involved drawing from noise rock, metalcore, grind, prog rock, and free improvisation, among other things. We have been iterating on that combination of ingredients since our first LP [An Excellent Servant But A Terrible Master], which came out in 2011.’
Without singles, fanfare, or any promotion whatsoever Pyrrhon surprise released their latest album Exhaust on Bandcamp Friday, September 6th. Dropping the record as a whole letting it speak for itself without any buildup was a bold choice which the band gave some further insight into.
‘The surprise release was actually proposed by Jason from Willowtip Records, but we were enthusiastic about the idea too. The whole pre-release promotional cycle seems a bit anachronistic to us, and a poor match for a style of music that is focused on the full LP experience. Both underground and mainstream artists have had a lot of success with surprise releases in recent years, and the Pyrrhon fanbase also reacted well to this approach.’
“Not Going to Mars” is a not so subtle dig at Elon Musk’s proposed settlement of the red planet. (In all seriousness and with every ounce of respect he deserves: Fuck you, Elon. Sincerely.) The track opens up Exhaust with this infectious three note feedback laced ‘do da dooh’. This devilish triplet permeates throughout the album. It’s a haunting little ear worm which burrows ever deeper with each repeated listen. I swear it plagues my nightmares at this point such that not even sleep is a reprieve. Dramatic? Maybe. Insidious? Certainly.
Pyrrhon represents the platonic ideal of avant-garde extremity. Technical death metal simply isn’t going to cut it as an adequate descriptor for this band. Their music is challenging, requiring effort and active engagement aurally and mentally. The thing about art is that it requires input, but through conversation you always get more back out. This isn’t something you can simply ignore or put on in the background. This isn’t something you can easily digest. But with struggle and rumination a greater mutual expression is synthesized between the music and the listener.
Exhaust has a very intentional and consistent sound. How did the writing and recording process compare to previous albums? ‘Relative to our prior recordings, we wrote more of this one together as a group, rather than having individual members bring in complete song skeletons and then fleshing those out. This resulted in more intuitive, streamlined structures than our past albums have featured. We also wanted to write material that would be more fun to play live, which led us in a similar direction.’
“Strange Pains” is a great example of Pyrrhon’s noise rock side. The bass is bouncing and the guitar is dancing. The vocals have a sludgy out of focus tone to them. ‘My scalped dreams went without a burial / I keep ‘em reeking in my pockets / Their weight reminds me I’m a deadbeat / Whenever I reach for my wallet / I’ve got strange pains / And I can’t afford ’em.’ It’s just a fun and lively track about crippling medical debt.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between art and music. How the purely visual and auditory can interact and overlap. I came to Pyrrhon through their album artwork. In 2021 Wax People put out a self-titled release billed as instrumental jazz metal. (Yes, it’s amazing.) The artwork features a haunting wax like figure melting into a rainbow. It was captivating and harrowing, perfectly depicting the music’s fierce and bold tone.
So I tracked down the artist and found that she had done artwork for several bands. Flyers, shirts, and album covers. One cover in particular caught my attention: a flayed hand with an eyeball like background of intestine and muscle tissue. I was a little late to the party checking out Pyrrhon’s fourth full length album Abscess Time, about a year after it was released. But better late than never. I quickly devoured their back catalog. All of this from a fascination with a piece of artwork.
Album covers by Caroline Harrison (@carolinedraws)
‘Caroline is essentially a fifth member of the band. We met in college and she has created all of our album art since. She is also my romantic partner, so she has an uncommonly granular understanding of the ideas and emotions that drive Pyrrhon’s music. Our evolution as a band and Caroline’s evolution as an artist are inseparably intertwined; we have literally grown up together and influenced each other in too many ways to count. She is obviously a unique talent and master of her craft, and I suspect that we would have many fewer fans than we do if her singular art hadn’t enticed so many people to check us out.’
Pyrrhon’s second album The Mother of Virtues came out ten years ago. To celebrate we took a look back at the record in one of our A Scene In Retrospect features which you should definitely check out for a deep dive into that now classic record.
Throughout Pyrrhon’s catalog they make sporadic but targeted usage of spoken word clips. Not unlike a meditative focus mantra before another gong of feedback and cymbals. Given that these are essentially the only clean voices the band employs, these moments are especially effective at making a statement or driving home a point. Sometimes on their earlier albums they added a grindcore style emphasis before another brutal breakdown.
“Stress Fractures” is one of the most devastating songs I’ve heard all year. It is simply unrelenting. There’s this “Flight of the Bumblebees”-like guitar lead that feels labyrinthine. The vocals and drums are terrifying, only building with intensity as the track progresses towards oblivion.
We listen to extreme music for the same reason we watch horror movies and ride roller coasters. There is a thrill and catharsis in direct confrontation with fear and death. We often feel most alive when confronting our mortality. Scary movies, amusement parks, and death metal provide relatively safe vehicles to work out our trauma. There’s a nervous sort of energy in all this madness and simulated violence.
‘There was a scary ‘life imitates art’ moment during the mix process for EXHAUST. The album features a recurring motif of physical wear & tear / degradation, particularly regarding cars. In “The Greatest City On Earth,” there’s one line in which a car’s ‘axel snaps in a five-foot pothole‘. As it happened, my car’s front axle actually did snap during a minor fender-bender right in the middle of the mixing period, after apparently being weakened by rust for many years. Pyrrhon’s lyrics are always meant to describe real-life shit, but that was a little too real for comfort.’
I don’t just wax philosophical because I enjoy it and existential dread is the primary thematic concern of their work. I do and it is. “Solastalgia” off Abscess Time for example is an ode to ‘distress based on the impact of environmental change.’ So it’s a song about the existential dread caused by environmental collapse which itself induces existential dread. Neat.
The band’s name is in fact deeply rooted in philosophy. Pyrrho, an early Greek philosopher and skeptic, advocated a philosophy which would be named after him. The goal of Pyrrhonism boiled down to a suspension of judgment in which we neither deny nor affirm anything resulting in an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul. Zen through skepticism. Very death metal.
The reality is I’m hesitant to even attempt an explanation of Pyrrhon’s actual music because it is so hard to describe. Sure I could talk about their complex song structure, atonal guitar riffs, and discordant jazz influenced rhythms. But due to the visceral nature of their music it can only be truly experienced first hand.
If I had to pick the single most defining element of Pyrrhon’s sound it would have to be dissonance. When asked what they find so appealing about these harsh noise elements the band joked: ‘Well, we’ve all taken a lot of blows to the head, and perhaps those rewired our tastes a little.’
While the release of Pyrrhon’s new album may have been unexpected, it will come as no surprise when Exhaust shows up all over end of year lists. So, what’s next for Pyrrhon? ‘We’ll be playing live sporadically in North America and hopefully Europe for the next calendar year while we decide what we want to work on next.’
