Pharaoh Overlord – 6

Rocket

I liked Pharaoh Overlord’s last release, but this newbie is on a whole different level. They’ve turned down that motorik dial a touch, to let in a banquet of euphoric synth work wrapped in a barrage of skewed disco flavours.

A groovesome cocktail easily demonstrated by “Path Eternal’”s Giorgio Moroder romp, Jussi Lehtisalo and Tomi Lepännen’s vapourising keylines and smeared transits slips and slides, their wares suitably effects-shadowed and dynamically diced. They are joined by Sumac’s Aaron Turner, whose growling Laibach-like gravel of a vocal completes the picture in an unusual pairing that avoids the tiresome clichés of both dance and doom to create something genuinely original. Yeah, it might not be to everybody’s taste, but I’m loving it.

The bronzed EBM wah-fed gothika of “Arms Of The Butcher”, with its incredible washy guitar, circles and chiselled glistens that cavort a plenty. The layering is fab too, a crafted emphasis that runs the album’s entire length, sends your eyes into a psychedelic spin whilst giving your nerve centres a cool kosmischhhhe kiss.

It certainly kookaburras quite a kick, delivers a blue spark to the psyche. The gorgeous silver surfing synth action of “Without Song All Will Perish”, on which the vocals fluidly ride; the epic rub of “Tomorrow’s Sun” a whirring golden arrow as Aaron’s FX-ed flourishes infect your ears like radiant rodents, raspberry-rippled in raucous off-kiltering noise. Then the fifteen minute “Blue Light Hum” finishes you off with a slower tempo(ed) burn of hazy emotionals beset with howling wolves and Kraftwerkian singe. A flood of atmospheric highs that has that gutteral gouge intersected in oozy Neu(!)-ologicals and chorusing angels, its tremoring transportives finally falling into a boozy wah-wah streaked epitaph.

I can see myself playing this a lot in the coming year, and 6 is the perfect prescription to chase away the gloomy greyness of the months ahead.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-