Pharaoh Overlord

Pharaoh Overlord
The Battle Of The Axehammer (LIVE)

"The wonderfully named Pharaoh Overlord, as you hopefully know already, is the instrumental psychedelic "stoner rock" side project of Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo and friends. The repetitive pulse of Circle jacked into some amped up, blown out Kyuss-worthy riffage. Needless to say, awesome stuff. Here comes these Finnish freaks' third album, and it's more like their spacey rockin' debut than the more experimental, mellow menace of Pharaoh Overlord II. It's a live record, with versions of two songs from their 1st album and one from their 2nd, plus two new compositions (also rendered live). And the nature of this music means that live may well be superior to studio, due to the element of psychedelic improv exploration at play and the energy being projected. And the speaker shredding "production" as well. Certainly in comparison to their first album, let alone the second, this is somewhat heavier and rawer, a real mantric beat-down from what could be a jackbooted, Iggy-less Stooges, jamming until the drugs run out. A rumbling, bashing, single-minded beast. Not unlike Skullflower's Exquisite Fucking Boredom. The live sound is gritty, super-sludgy, with a bit of that Doktor Kettu murk. Like one big throbbing distorto gland. A Julian Cope wet dream wethinks. Five tracks stretched out over almost one hour. They're marching towards oblivion and you'll be happy to fall in line. Hup hup. The applause from the live audience that ends each track is almost bizarre, not simply because it seems that such outbursts of positivity would have been preemptively silenced by the relentless negatory doom-throb of this music, but also because it doesn't even seem like there should be an audience at all. Pharaoh Overlord should be playing this music high on a mesa somewhere in a blasted desert, heard only by ugly, heavy-lidded lizards.
Nice title by the way. The Battle of the Axehammer??? Yeah! Great cover art too."
--Aquarius Records

"The only thing more ludicrous than naming a band Pharaoh Overlord is calling an album The Battle of the Axehammer. Yet somehow, this trio from Pori, Finland, makes it all work – most likely because it never sullies itself with the irony-metal rehash that its moniker suggests. Those kitschy titles seem thoroughly irrelevant in light of the players’ rapturous tunnel vision, which flattens out the dynamics of stoner rock and psychedelia with a logic-defying, cold-blooded adherence to numbing repetition and pure compositional stasis. Taped live in Helsinki in September 2001, Axehammer finds deep-throb bassist Jussi Lehtisalo and mechanistic drummer Tomi Leppänen in fine hypnotic form, while guitarist Janne Westerlund piles on the low-end distortion alongside guests Jyrki Laiho (Stalwart; ex-Paine, ex-Circle) and Pekka Pirttikangas (Cosmo Jones Beat Machine, Astro Can Caravan). Their onstage chemistry and the recording’s in-the-red fidelity are invaluable assets; a rattier, nastier tone enhances songs from Pharaoh Overlord’s already-laudable back catalog, the big-boned #1 (Ektro, 2001) and its quieter, mysterious follow-up, II (No Quarter, 2003). A thuggish version of the latter disc’s “Skyline” breathes particularly humid, opiate-laden air, as does the unforgettably primal “Black Horse,” one of two previously unissued tracks. Each tune germinates from a single boorish riff that builds for 10-plus minutes and subliminally alters itself atop steady, almost incongruously stark and tasteful percussion. Solos, singing, fills, frills, crescendos, verses, choruses, bridges, hooks and drama are verboten; this is stripped-down, instinctual music with the feel and flow of melting tar. Minimal to the point of somnolence but substantial enough to inspire headbanging, Axehammer catches Pharaoh Overlord at an aesthetic peak, lumbering through the autumn night like a gigantic, slow-motion reptile."
--Jordan N. Mamone, Dusted Magazine