Pyrrhon, ‘Fever Kingdoms’ — New EP

New York City's tech death hybrid Pyrrhon will release their debut EP, 'Fever Kingdoms,' this month via The Path Less Traveled, with designs on releasing a full-length in 2011. The band isn't interested in guitar wankery, for the sake of showing off. They are interested in more noble pursuits, like tearing your face off your skull and then ramming up your ... well, you know.

Even if the music has its violent moment, Pyrrhon aren't metal meatheads. Actually, vocalist Doug Moore is a smarty pants who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, which is an Ivy League institution. Guitarist Dylan is an NYU graduate and drummer Alex is currently finishing his jazz performance degree at NYU as well. Pyrrhon also temper their brains with sensitivity. In metal? It does exist.

"I studied political science, philosophy, economics and English at Penn since I had a pretty wacky interdisciplinary major," Moore told Noisecreep. 'Book learnin' ist nicht krieg, but my studies totally changed my worldview. I went to school with a strong sense of moral fortitude and purpose; by the time I finished, I had been convinced that the world makes no sense, there's no right or wrong way to conduct yourself, and that even the smartest, best-informed people are just bumbling around like a bunch of blindfolded f---wits.

"Basically, my academic experience destroyed a lot of the assumptions that I had built my life upon and made day-to-day reality seem way scarier and less reasonable. I try to shunt that sense of confusion and insecurity into my lyrics and performance. A lot of metal frontmen, and especially death metal frontmen, get caught up in tough-guy posturing and machismo. So I think a little vulnerability goes a long way in this sort of music." And that's just one of many things that helps Pyrrhon stand out from the overcrowding of peers in their genre.

Moore also writes reviews for Metal Review, so he's like one of us Noisecreep scribes. "I was writing long before I was part of Pyrrhon," he said. "I've been an avid metal fan since my early teen years and a words-oriented dude since before then, so music criticism seemed to be an obvious choice. And I was lucky enough to be asked onto the staff at a very young age."

Being in a band and being a music writer affords Moore a unique, both-sides-of-the-fence perspective, and he's able to approach the bands he writes about a little more objectively. He said, "Playing in my own band has made reviewing easier in some ways and tougher in others. On one hand, I know how much time, money and emotion goes into playing in a start-up metal act, so I'm less inclined to be hard on young acts. On the other hand, I feel like I have a better idea of when bands are being lazy, which makes me less sympathetic. Hopefully I've become less of a dick, rather than more of one, though I think being a dick is a reviewer's job to some degree."

In today's information age, when music journalism has been whittled down to low calorie, bite-sized and easily-digestible chunks, the art of writing about music has gone out the window, since anyone with a WiFi connection and a keyboard thinks he or she is a journalist. Moore's take on the watering down of music press and how he approaches writing about music is simple. He said, "Music criticism is in danger of becoming obsolete. Given that nowadays anyone can find out exactly what any band sounds like by Googling them and streaming their songs, there's not much use in dissecting albums on a song-by-song basis or comparing them to other bands that occupy the same insanely tiny niche of the metal world. At this point, I just try to give readers a novel way to think about the album's content, along with some sense of whether I liked it or not. I also occasionally try to place the album in a larger context or use it as an example of a trend I've noticed in the way people listen to or talk about music."

Given his writing background, I had to put Moore to the test and get him to nail his band down in 140 words or less, to see how efficient and economical he is with his words. He passed the vivid test, saying, "Our music is f---ing ugly. We love zany guitar noises, blast beats, funny rhythms, and double meanings. We're not old-school, we don't look 'br00tal,' and we're weird nerdy guys, but we'll rip your throat out anyway. We listen to everything from the kvltest Darkthrone worship to limp-wristed indie rock to psychedelic freak out noise to cutting-edge jazz ... and lots and lots of Gorguts. We like tripping people out. We will perform just about anywhere and we're easy to find on the inter-webs, so hit us up. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, and we play the music we play because we don't know what else to do with ourselves. It's the center of our lives."

The band will head into the studio to record their first full-length this winter. They'll be playing intermittent shows in New York City and the surrounding area in the meantime.