Exclusive: Pestilent Empire Breaks Down Their Debut Self-Titled EP

Progressive metal fans might want to turn their collective attention to Brooklyn, New York, because a new outfit in the genre just dropped their self-titled debut EP and holy shit, is it wild. Featuring crushing riffs, thundering rhythms, and enough time signatures to make an atomic clock blush, Pestilent Empire is a name you should keep on your radar.

With the EP set to release tomorrow, we not only got an exclusive first-listen for you, the MetalSucks reader, but we also got the band to break down each of the four tracks found on the EP. With each track clocking in at a minimum of six minutes, there’s certainly a lot to unpack in each song, which is why it’s great to get some insight from the band itself.

So go ahead — scroll down, hit play and read on to learn more about the music and Pestilent Empire. You can preorder the EP now over at the band’s Bandcamp page.

The Infiltration of a Clandestine Government Facility

I started playing around with the main riff/motif of this song around the same time that the internet meme was popular where people were talking about storming Area 51. I envisioned the idea of someone actually sneaking into an Area 51 type facility, walking around and seeing all the wild secrets, then getting compromised and having an action movie type shootout. After finally making it all the way to where the aliens were, they discover the aliens are just a bunch of hippies hanging out on a couch next to a lava lamp in this sixties shag carpeted room, smoking weed and just kind of hanging out thinking it’s still 1969 while the government runs tests on them. So this is the instrumental telling of that tale.

It’s a cinematic adventure that’s full of wacky left turns, Bollywood references, and time signature changes. The structure and length is heavily inspired by Between the Buried and Me. There’s even a part in 13/8 just because we wanted to write a part in 13/8. The section toward the end with all the bells and whistles and latin percussion was directly inspired by Rob Zombie’s “Ratfinks, Suicide Tanks and Cannibal Girls” and the psychedelic scene it plays over in “Beavis and Butthead Do America” where they’re lost in the desert tripping on Peyote. It goes hand in hand with our hero’s discovery of those deadbeat extra terrestrials.

A Visitors Deception of Peace

This song is another odyssey. A three-act ripper that portrays the chaos, fear, and deceit brought by an otherworldly being’s planetary arrival. Kind of like “Mars Attacks” but with shreddy guitar solos and less chihuahuas.

Much like the previous song, this song started from a single guitar riff. I had just gotten a new 7-string right around the time I first heard Mick Gordon’s Doom – BFG Division. I was playing around with the guitar in drop-A tuning, and with that song rattling around in my head, the opening riff was the first to be conceived. The “verse” riff with the harmonic motif came from just chugging around with that open 7th string. 

It shifts around in styles from that industrial intro to shreddy guitar solos and orchestral elements to Periphery bendy riffs in the middle and then into an Animals as Leaders type tapping section in the second act. There’s even Mario Kart references sprinkled in there.

I really wanted to write a part that gave you a sense of anxiety, which is what the second act of this song is. On top of that main augmented tapping melody, the tempo changes, arpeggiated synth layers, alien sounds, and musical breaks are the key ingredients to this neurotic concoction. The “deception” part of the title comes from the part at 7:26 where the guitars open up and seesaw back and forth from major to minor, and then back to that augmented arpeggio motif.  Like, “Oh shit, we’ve been stuck trying to escape this dark alien spaceship, but there’s the light at the end of tunnel!” ONLY FOR THE LIGHT TO FUCKING DIE OUT AS YOU GET SWEPT BACK INTO THE HELL THAT IS THIS CONFOUNDED MELODY THAT JUST WONT STOP REPEATING.

An Insular Opulence

A more serious departure from the multi-act epics. The structure for this song was pretty much completed in the fall of 2020 – in the middle of the pandemic, right before the 2020 election. It was an incredibly dark and chaotic time. It felt like the world was headed in a dark direction and I personally was just in a hopeless headspace. (I was stuck living at my parents house for christ’s sake!)

Now of course, this is an instrumental record, but when this song was completed, it just felt like it was missing something. I played around with adding a couple different samples (mostly vintage recordings of incoherent ramblings from psych ward patients) but nothing with any true meaning. I had been watching the news amidst piecing this song together and the state of affairs, frankly, made me mad as hell and I wasn’t keen on taking it anymore. Turns out my profound feeling of rage was already articulated quite well in the Howard Beale “Network” monologue. I thought it would fit comfortably in the slow building synth intro. Once that was in there, it felt only natural to add the climate change warnings news clips. Bookend it with some rain sound effects and a sound bite of a world leader begging for action (is he not aware of his power?) and you got yourself a thematic activism song.

There’s zero subtlety in the message of this song. In terms of artistic creativity, it is way too on the nose and borderline cringe. But I believe that’s where we’re at currently with this sinking ship of climate catastrophe. If we’re going to be real here for a second, there’s no more time for clever metaphors and allegories. We’re 90 seconds to midnight. There’s been countless studies and warnings from scientists, news reports, (hell, these news clips were from Fox News of all places) movies, intelligence agencies, David Attenborough, Bill Nye, et cetera et cetera, all warning us of the warming of this planet, yet very little has been done to slow it down. See if you can find the JG Wentworth easter egg in this song that will give you a hint of why we haven’t done much to stop this torpedoing nosedive straight to our burning demise. Or drought/volcanic/flooded demise; depends on where you live. (Nice knowing you Florida! Thanks for…idk Busch Gardens…??)

Now, the album art for this release was inspired by the first two songs, but this song is really where the band name came from. For an empire to thrive, someone needs to suffer. Since the beginning of time, empires have risen on the suffering of others. Egypt, Rome, England, The USA, Walter White… Empires have historically had negative effects on the world. Environmentally, it prioritizes profit over sustainability, worsening climate change and environmental degradation. The countries most affected by climate change are usually the ones who have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. It is the empires who spew the most carbon in the atmosphere while raking in the most profits. You simply cannot have an empire without pestilence.

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

This one is the opposite to the depressing nature of the previous song. We wanted to close this release out with something more hopeful and fun. Something that counters the dread with a bit of joyful optimism. Something to elevate the listener. An ascension.

Actually, what even is this record?? Not a single song off of this record sounds cohesive in style. There’s no vocals, yet there’s one song with a bit of structure and a climate change message while all the others are long and meandering like video game soundtracks or a Martin Scorsese movie. What are they even trying to say here as artists? And did he really just compare himself to Martin Scorsese? 

We here at the Pestilent Empire Corporation are all about inclusivity and the blending of genres. We believe music, like people, should not be segregated, but celebrated together as one. Songs should be free to transition from genre to genre and time signature to time signature as they see fit.

Just as not all people who live in an apartment building are the same, each passage of this 32 minute cacophony of sound isn’t either. This penthouse song in particular is no exception. A stray from the dark and foreboding harmonic minor keys of the previous songs, “The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel” twists us through exuberant singalong guitar melodies and common pop chord progressions to dance club synth segments and emo anthems.

So when you buy this apartment building from the Pestilent Empire Corporation of Doom LTD LLC INC DBA, just know you are making the world a better, more inclusive place. We’re a corporation so we care about stuff. No like, actually. We, like, actually care. Seriously.

Now please be sure to buy our shirts that were totally not made in a sweatshop.