1 Dec 2020

Louder than War reviews and interviews Pharaoh Overlord about '6'


They say:

There’s definitely less electricity from Pharaoh Overlord inside of their latest, 6, but having less guitar focus results in more stress on the sounds of synthesizers creating a space.

Tomi Leppänen and Jussi Lehtisalo describe these changes saying: “With album 5 we started to make the music more synthetic and electronic, based on the lineup change we made from six persons to two. With this album we didn’t have a specific musical concept in mind, it had more to do with the question about how to perform the songs live.”

At the same time, while getting to some new musical landscapes, the founders of Pharaoh Overlord decided to put a bit of dissonance, something very untypical which led to their collaboration with Aaron Turner. Former member of ISIS, and the driving force behind SUMAC/Hydra Head Records notes that: “This was a great record to work on as it came at a time where I was lacking my own direction and needed somewhere to focus my energy.”

It’s quite hard to focus on a compositional structure listening to the combination of synthpop ambience and Turner’s deep hoarse growling. Very untypical combination. And also, very difficult to find the balance of things without having a layers of distorted guitars – like Skinny Puppy during The Process-era or Antichrist Superstar did...

Read the rest here: Louder than War

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