Freak Scene #16: Black Pyramid Embark on a Quest
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we go on a journey with Northampton trio Black Pyramid on their formidable new album, and check out the new single from New Haven’s ammar.
The best heavy metal has always come from bands that are, at heart, storytellers. From Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper,” Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” to Mastodon’s Moby-Dick-inspired album Leviathan, thunderous riffs pair well with epic narratives. Call it quest-metal. Northampton trio Black Pyramid excel at it on their latest, The Paths of Time Are Vast.
It’s the group’s first new album since 2013, and it is indeed vast. Six of the eight tracks here stretch past eight minutes, with the imposing album closer, “The Quantum Phoenix,” clocking in at nearly twice that. Yet length is no issue: these songs are riveting from start to finish. Singer and guitarist Andy Beresky, bassist Eric Beaudry and drummer/keyboardist Andy Kivela frequently shift tempos and alter the riff pattern, which keeps the songs nimble and dynamic while adding to the sense of a journey undertaken.
Black Pyramid are less about speed than atmosphere, favoring rugged soundscapes built around huge guitar riffs and drums that land with the booming force of a titan swinging an anchor chain against an iron door. Together, they lend the songs an ominous tension, as if Black Pyramid are making a stand in some untamed wilderness on the edge of an impending storm. More accurately, they are the storm. Beresky has a gruff, powerful voice that cuts through the churning tumult of his guitar playing, and Beaudry’s basslines range from rumbling to squalid. First song “Bile, Blame and Blasphemy” opens with a clanging guitar intro that soon shifts into a brooding riff and Beresky’s burly vocals. Eventually, after a psychedelic whirlwind of a guitar solo, and then a moody breakdown section, the band downshifts into a galloping finale that brings the song to a close after 12 minutes.
The trio divides the title track into a three-part song cycle that runs a shade past 20 minutes in total. “The Paths of Time Are Vast, Part 1,” starts things off with moody, effects-treated guitars and restrained drums that build into part two. That’s when the riffs take hold, accompanied by Beresky’s doom-prophet vocals. After the musicians go hurtling through a breakneck wordless section that twists, turns and changes shape, Black Pyramid arrive at part three, a 10-minute mini-epic all its own that spins off into spacey instrumental textures beholden to early Pink Floyd as much as to the trio’s heavy metal forebears.
Though some quest-metal is of the literal, swords-and-spells variety, The Paths of Time Are Vast is more allegorical. There’s an element of the occult here, but these songs represent an odyssey of self-awakening, an attempt to step out from the long shadow cast by fear, hatred and subjugation. Whether Black Pyramid ever complete their quest is almost immaterial: like all great metal, the point is the journey.
Ammar Tries to Let Go on ‘you’ll make a fool out of me’
Flying in the face of the first-thought, best-thought approach to creative pursuits, New Haven musician ammar has repeatedly revisited his latest single, “you’ll make a fool out of me.” Though the singer, songwriter and producer first wrote the song four years ago after a romantic relationship crashed and burned, ammar has reworked the song more than once as his feelings about the end of the relationship have evolved.
“Our relationship was a rollercoaster ride, and this song served as the soundtrack to it all. The beauty and the chaos harmonized frequently," ammar says in press notes about the song. The track pairs his pained, effects-treated vocals with descending guitar lines before a full arrangement with drums, thrumming bass and squalling guitar bursts through in the final quarter of the tune.
A New Haven native who considers himself a punk at heart, ammar, 25, moved to Los Angeles at 18 before returning to Connecticut during the pandemic. “You’ll make a fool out of me” is the follow-up to WHAT’S BEHIND BLUE SKIES?, a five-song EP that ammar released in December.
Upcoming Concerts
Band of Horses play with City & Colour Sept. 7 at College Street Music Hall in New Haven (tickets), and Sept. 12 at Summer Stage at Tree House Brewery in South Deerfield (tickets).
“Blister in the Sun” remains a big draw 41 years later: The Violent Femmes have added a second date Aug. 14 at the Pines Theater at Look Park in Northampton; tickets are here. So far those are the only two concerts scheduled for the Pines this summer.
Club d’Elf comes to the Drake in Amherst Sept. 21 (tickets). Joanne Shaw Taylor plays the Iron Horse Aug. 16, while Habib Koité, Aly Keïta and Lamine Cissokho are there Nov. 20 (Iron Horse tickets).
Next week: indie-rock veterans Buffalo Tom tell us what the scene was like back in the day when the band members attended UMass.
Do you know a musician you’d like to read about in Freak Scene? Let me know! To submit your (or their) music for coverage consideration, send a note to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first. You can find previous issues of Freak Scene in the archive. (Freak Scene is free, but donations are gratefully accepted, and have no bearing on coverage.)