Dream a Dream

Doom riffs, six drummers and a flute – it’s all in a day’s work for Pÿlon.

Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus are arguably the prime audible influences on Pÿlon’s music. On DOOM, Pÿlon add to that brew more than a hint of the melancholy in the epic vein of Count Raven circa High On Infinity.

“Riffs and layers of crunching guitars – that’s just the way I write,” guitarist and new lead singer Matt Brand concurs, “riffs in themselves are powerful and create a vital, moving texture. Still, it was important for us to add an ethereal element to the compositions by simplifying the song structures and working out more details with instrumentation. Thus we added spots of flute and keys but resisted the lure of glossing everything – we decidedly wanted to retain, and perhaps underline, the distorted roughness of a grooving old-school guitar sound!
“Th’ Eternal Wedding Band, our previous album was quite well-received and we hope that DOOM will appeal to the same type of traditional doom and ‘70s rock fans. It does so to us! - There are guitars distorted to the max, some warbly organ sounds, lofty choirs, wistful flutes and clarinets intertwined with searing lead guitars, the trademark nasty guitar solos and – god forbid! – highly illegal bass and drum solo passages! ... Doom may be low and slow – but also so much more!”

Bass player Jan Thomas adds: “Doom metal is very much on the rise at the moment which is a beautiful thing. New bands and new festivals are cropping up, delivering the goods with both elegance and raw power – an entrancing mixture! In releasing another album ourselves, we wish to show that the limits of doom have not yet been reached and that there are always new ways of expressing life & death, power & frailty, love & despair through music which touches at the soul.”
“The lyrics are loosely connected by the theme of doom in its etymological sense: fate, ruin or judgement. There are the paths to death in “In The Shade”, but also what lies beyond it and how love transcends it in “Beneath, Beyond” and “DeadLove”. And there’s the opposite – or the origin, if you will – as well: “Ho Theos Erchetai” is based on the accounts of the Creations in Paradise Lost.”

Renovatio (Renewal & Relapse) was chosen as an album opener not on account of its being the longest track, clocking in at 10:47, but because it encapsulates much of what Pÿlon’s latest compositions are about: light and shade, heavy riffs and floating passages, amazing lead work coupled with emotive Ozzy-like vocals. It includes an unconventional marriage of a very modern Dimebag-sounding guitar solo next to ’68-’72 jazz rock drum, flute and bass solos off any Black Widow, Sweet Smoke or Black Sabbath album and riffs evocative of Saint Vitus or Count Raven.

Turn to Doomstone and Hors Des Sentiers Battus for real doom crunchers, to Beneath, Beyond for a fragile and tender air or to Ho Theos Erchestai and DeadLove for epic tracks with rich and intertwined instrumentations.

DOOM comes in a beautiful 8-page digipack with embossed 3D effects.

Doom may be low and slow – but also so much more!

© Quam Libet Records, 2009
www.quamlibetrecords.ch