Heavy Meadow: Pyramids Awesome, Eminently Hype-able

A dozen different metalheads could view Pyramids from a dozen different points of reference. Is their new album A Northern Meadow the result of a black metal act’s entry into a Radiohead tribute contest? Or maybe the sprawling, tumbling album is like the Deftones aged by two more decades of extreme metal evolution. Elsewhere, fans might consider it the collision of early Pitch Shifter, pre-teen Porcupine Tree, and a malfunctioning pedal board. Godflesh and Levitation playing at the same time, a Norwegian Mars Volta, something like that. Everybody’s right, still the Pyramids identity is only theirs.

And as every breakthrough doubles as an opening for a craftier band, Pyramids in 2015 might benefit from Deafheaven’s buzz and Jesu’s pioneering. And though their context is clearer via the eroding of stubborn reverence for the black metal genre, they can’t be mistaken for a “former BM act turned shoegaze.” That’s not to say that Meadow isn’t blunt and reverby — or that post-BM-gaze is a bad look — but the album’s elusive patterns and leafpile layers lend an arch, mad vibe, one that conveys no regard for anything but decline and destruction. To further discourage doubt, Pyramids’ founding trio of Texans is joined on Meadow by Colin Marston (Gorguts, Krallice) and Blut Aus Nord mastermind Vindsval. Crank it up!

Pyramids’ A Northern Meadow came out last week via Profound Lore. Get it here and here.