Pyrrhon emerges like a peak-fitness athlete for the start of The Mother of Virtues: At once, the entire New York quartet dashes ahead, with caustic, barked vocals riding dervish guitars and a rhythm section that moves like a target scrambling for survival. The pinball-like grindcore lasts for less than 90 seconds, the band ultimately snapping into silence beneath the decaying contortions of frontman Doug Moore. It’s an aggressive introduction, a road sign that proclaims, “Welcome to the Wonderful, Terrifying World of Pyrrhon.” But “The Oracle of Nassau” serves as a successful screen test, too, an offering of bona fides meant to prove that, if all else fails, this band can come direct and fast, hard and mean. The move allows them to play most everything but straightforward death or doom, hardcore or noise rock for the subsequent 50 minutes of their excellent second album. Instead, they push those elements together to craft complicated, dense, and personal tantrums that, as intended, lash at the bounds of strict genre acceptability.
That, more or less, is the implicit point of Pyrrhon, a “technical death metal” group that seems much less interested in proving their physical dexterity, however impressive it may be, than espousing mental wherewithal through sets of alien contortions and chimeras. Not unlike clear inspirations Gorguts or Demilich, Pyrrhon seem set on proving their worth inside metal while simultaneously working their way outside the form, too. “I’m not arrogant enough to describe our approach as the future of metal, but I consider Pyrrhon part of a broader effort to expand and develop the genre,” Moore said in a 2012 interview with MetalRecusants. “Our primary concern is expanding the definition…without losing its fiery spirit.” In the three years that have passed since the release of their debut, An Excellent Servant but a Terrible Master, not only has the band signed to Relapse, but they’ve also seemed to stretch their interests and their ability to link them. In 2011, they were a metal band with other, less-obvious musical interests; in 2014, those other interests serve as the springboard for one of the year’s most inclusive and delightfully challenging gauntlets.
Nowhere is all this more apparent than “White Flag”, the album’s second track. If “The Oracle of Nassau” was meant to prove Pyrrhon’s skills and force, these thesis-like 10 minutes are meant to showcase instead Pyrrhon’s smarts and finesse. The band turns down at the start, a torpid beat waltzing through a cabinet-rattling bassline. The easy opening offers an empty canvas, which the quartet fills with wrenched guitars and ravaged vocals and then crinkles with a rhythm section that speeds up only to slow down, and vice versa. Pyrrhon create tension by writing outward from what seems to be the song’s core; that is, every time you start to find the direction of “White Flag”, you notice that Dylan DiLella’s guitar is running countercurrent to that momentum or ignoring it altogether. At some points, drummer Alex Cohen and bassist Erik Malave share a nervous system, as they switch between turbid sludge and frantic outbursts without hesitation; other times, they peel apart entirely, the bass lowly sulking as the drums sprint ahead. Even as “White Flag” ends on a slow, evil crawl toward the exit, Cohen adds a steady blast beat in the background, teasing an eruption that never comes. It’s a masterpiece of defiance and escalation, a master plan for all the ways Pyrrhon works past its prescribed realm during the rest of The Mother of Virtues.
Those intentions unfold in sometimes surprising ways throughout The Mother of Virtues: “The Parasite in Winter”, for instance, might first feel rather rote. But amid the lashing drums and pinprick leads, Pyrrhon makes the trip seem like a demented amusement park ride, where a guitar solo leads first to a lysergic abyss and then into a depraved circus where Michael Gira works as the ringmaster. The terrific “Balkanized”, which takes a train’s click-clack beat as its backbone, interrupts its feeling of complete claustrophobia with a psychedelic comedown that suggests electric Miles Davis. “Eternity in a Breath” moves with the same steely resolve and eventual phosphorescence as Slint’s “Good Morning, Captain,” albeit refracted like evening sunlight slipping through thick clouds. DiLella functions as a pinwheel of ideas and enthusiasms here. In only minutes, he conjures shimmering West African guitar music, twinkling classicism, writhing no wave, and suffocating doom.
Moore supplies a related versatility, too. He is the mouthpiece that reiterates the restlessness of the band at his back. He’s capable of occasionally dropping into a bottom-barrel Chris Barnes bellow or lashing out in barely decipherable, squealing invective. His best moments might come, though, when he foregrounds his other inspirations. Though the band rips through “Invisible Injury”, with guitars lacing like electrical wire through a rigid and technical rhythm section, Moore sounds not like a heavy metal hero but more like David Yow. “I’m trying hard not to feel ungrateful,” he yells to launch the song’s back half, his voice pinned between the band’s muscles like an early Touch & Go hero hanging around the wrong set of tough guys. “But it can really get you down, man.” Too bad about his frustrations, but at least they’ve inspired an interesting and audacious record.
