If you happen to be a fan of both vintage krautrock acts as well as some of today’s finest current crop then there is an excellent chance that you’ll be quite pleased by the seriously rocking sounds contained within Pharaoh Overlord’s new full-length album, #3. The band’s sound is tightly focused on creating involved and engrossing multi-layered psychedelic rock tapestries. There’s no need for anything silly like vocal work to get in the way of this central mission so they have cast such foolishness to the side. The Overlord’s calling to engrossingly rock the listener is so intense that they created a six track album where five of those tracks are right at ten minutes long (or more). That's plenty of time to get completely lost in the music.
“Test Flight,” the album's first track, is a heavy and straight-up rocker. While that might seem like a trite description, in this time when a true good and heavy instrumental rock jam is hard to find it is indeed great praise. The guitars start up immediately and they waste no time while kicking straight into a heavy, heavy jam that is just as rich in Janne Westerlund and Jussi Lehtisalo’s dueling, noodling guitars as it is in Aki Peltonen’s metronomic and intoxicating backbeat. This solid foundation and rich, dense psychedelic layering is present throughout the duration with the drums always providing an anchoring point for the various guitar explorations. This overall blueprint can be seen in a number of the album's various intoxicating tracks. Again and again, the band repetitive phrases pull you in and leave you in a trace-like state, a state that doesn't even slow down as the songs move from track to track.
That said, don’t worry - there’s more than just rhythmic instrumental rock goodness going on. “Autobahn” moves away from the structure and format found on most of the rest of the album and provides a ten-minute session of heavy guitar feedback and destruction. It’s hard to tell exactly what sort of carnage was left behind in the band's wake, but it had to be massive.
The entirety of #3 is stunning. Such excellence can hardly be seen as surprising when you realize that the band’s core is comprised entirely of long-time members of Finnish kraut living legends Circle. It is a welcome addition to the collection of any fan of Circle and most anyone interested in the present (and future) of psychedelic rock.
