The legendary New York Death Metal brutalists Pyrexia have returned with their eighth entry into their storied discography. Whilst 2023 saw the group releasing a twenty fifth anniversary rerecording of their 1997 classic LP ‘System of the Animal’, it has been four years since Pyrexia last gracefully cursed us with an album of entirely new material. Frequently overshadowed by their more well known alumni from the formative nineties heyday of old school NYDM (New York Death Metal), the likes of genre dreadnoughts Incantation, Suffocation, and Immolation. Despite the band’s brilliance, Pyrexia has always maintained more of a somewhat cult status among fans of the style globally.
‘Unholy’ in classic Pyrexia fashion features a slim runtime of eight tracks. The album sees the band moving away from some of the Slam elements that have pervaded their releases since the turn of the millennium. Jim Beach’s vocals are more centered around his intense lower mid range growls as opposed to the guttural depths of the last couple of Pyrexia albums. On the song ‘Wrath’, which opens with a snippet of dialogue from Stanley Kubrick’s: The Shining, the band takes multiple opportunities to centre themselves around a single guitar motif and collectively all instruments follow suit like a platoon of soldiers obediently marching in line to the barked orders of their terrifying commander.
‘Path of Disdain’ is a classic dirty concrete slab of unforgiving NYDM aggression with the staple bouncy riffs of the genre; the band are clearly channelling important acts in their scene such as Internal Bleeding and Skinless. The latter few songs of the album heavily focus on the interplay between triplet note chugging and in your face power chords that emerge between the rhythmic grinding like mechanical jackhammers drilling holes into your eardrums.
After thirty five years as a band, Pyrexia have released another awesome entry into the Atlantic cesspool of their home state’s storied take on Death Metal. For anyone who dabbles in the sound from time to time, Unholy offers a respectable take on the modern style that is certainly well worth investigating and serves to continue the very consistent quality level of Pyrexia albums.
Time to Kill Records
- Country: Italy
- Style: Black Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Other
- Links: Homepage, Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, Youtube
