It is easy to sit down with Abscess Time, the newest record by Pyrrhon, and list off the shards of influence they have assembled into their collagist sound. There is noise rock a la The Jesus Lizard, Today is the Day and KEN Mode, bits of mutant post-djent prog ala Car Bomb, a heaping dose of the extended technique-laden high-skronk prog-death of Gorguts, not to mention a street-level sense of punk/crust acidity to the lyrics and timbre of the record. It is easy to do this in part because the band doesn’t, at this point, need to hide vectors of influence anymore; they’ve always been a great group but, ever since their 2014 breakthrough The Mother of Virtues, they’ve been one of the best extreme metal groups going. We sometimes overly privilege pure brute originality, the notion of being the very first to ever deploy a sonic conceit or song form, but this kind of mindset is ultimately a betrayal of music-as-craft. These avant-gardist notions are partly so powerful because of what they offer us in terms of being tools; that a band like Pyrrhon assembles such a span of different ideas, chips edges off to make them fit the bigger picture and creates a mural out of them is, if anything, the point of these exercises, not a betrayal of them.
 
One of my favourite and most interesting heavy bands out there right now. The record has only been played a handful of times, still in very good condition with only minor creases on the corners of the gatefold sleeve. Otherwise its in great nick!