Pyrrhon – Exhaust LP

Pyrrhon, which formed in New York City in 2008 when most of the band was in college, has always been classified as technical death metal for convenience. Their music, however, defies convention—even in the anything-goes world of 21st-century metal. Pyrrhon's music contains the musical prowess of Gorguts’s Obscura, the unrelenting rhythmic pummeling of Big Black, and the experimentation of free jazz. Moore’s lyrics - a combination of poetry and flash prose - are a welcome relief in an art form awash in stale cliches and genre tropes. Pyrron’s jarring and complex music - a true outlier when the band released their first album over a decade ago - requires attention and scrutiny, and demands replay. Pyrrhon’s fifth album, Exhaust, is not a concept record. However, many songs touch on where we are in 2024; people are overwhelmed and unable to catch their breath. The album was initially called “Exhaustion,” but drummer Steve Schwegler noticed recurring imagery about cars slowly degrading from overuse - an apt metaphor for an album exploring perpetual burnout. On a larger level, Exhaust is about things - machines or humans - being ground down and never recovering. It also hints at the exhaustion of staying sane in a world overrun with digital devices, social media, holograms, and artificial intelligence. “It’s about the experience of being pushed beyond your ability to sustain things,” singer Doug Moore says. “We went through a pandemic, and now people act like it didn’t happen. We went through an attempted fascist insurrection, and now people act like it didn’t happen. It’s a sense of constantly juggling things and never having a handle on them. That feeling became a big part of this record and the imagery.” Exhaust was recorded with longtime Pyrrhon producer Colin Marston in December 2023 at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves studios in Queens, shortly before the studio closed.