It reads:
Pharaoh Overlord’s new album is a bizarre and brilliant thing, a record of pure energy that smashes ugly, guttural vocals (courtesy of frequent collaborator Aaron Turner of Sumac, Isis and Old Man Gloom) with a dollop of Italo-disco shimmer and relentless psych-industrial EBM thumps. It’s the second LP in a row the project’s released with just Tomi Leppänen and Jussi Lehtisalo at their core, and a sonic expansion on last year’s supercharged krautrock opus 5. Where that album saw the two musicians, who also play in constantly-evolving Finnish greats Circle, take their cues from early Kraftwerk (evidenced by its distinctly Ralf Und Florian album cover), 6 takes that gravity and adds a potent dose of sunny American gloss.
“When we realised that together we look like Steve Jobs and Jerry Garcia, we threw in influences from the West Coast, the enthusiasm of the early Apple Computer and the Grateful Dead. Our aim was to make ‘joyful noise’ with the minimum equipment,” Leppänen tells tQ via email. In its over-the-topness, Pharaoh Overlord has always been a project with which they can dive headfirst and unabashed into music’s more exuberant climes, from their early work’s indulgent stoner-rock pomp, to 2011’s hair metal LP Out Of The Darkness for which they added an umlaut to their name. Their first to be released on Rocket, 6 feels special even among this wild discography, one of the finest they’ve ever put out whether with Pharaoh Overlord, Circle, or anything else...
Read the rest here: The Quietus
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