PRAETORIAN-PYLON CULT
"There's that word again. 'Heavy.' Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?"-Doc Brown
After releasing three EPs in 2017, 2019, and 2022, respectively, the Stevenage, UK quartet Praetorian’s first full-length Pylon Cult, a caustic, abrasive eight-song mix of blackened hardcore and sludge with various other strands of experimental and extreme metal, will be released at the end of this month. Praetorian are one of a decent-sized cohort of bands in the UK right now using the wide range of the heavy music palette to create unique sounds that don’t quite fit any specific genre or sub-genre—bands like Grief Ritual and Burner, for example—I’ve simply taken to characterizing as "heavy."
When I first put Pylon Cult on to "get the lay of the land" and general impressions as I always do with a record before repeat spins to take notes and dive into the contents more deeply, it was a frigid, windy, slate-gray day outside with snow swirling and nary a sign of life out here in the country, which seemed rather apropos for the contents of the record. The inspiration for the album’s title Pylon Cult is that of Hookland, a, as vocalist and lyricist Tom Clements states:
Fictional county that David Southwell created as a process of re-enchantment. Putting the wyrdness back into the modern world. The best way to explain it would be to quote David himself when asked what Hookland is:
"HOOKLAND IS THE RECOVERED MEMORY THAT YOU CANNOT DISMISS.
HOOKLAND IS THE RECOVERED MEMORY YOU SECRETLY HOPE IS TRUE.
HOOKLAND IS THAT PLACE YOU VISITED ONCE, BUT CANNOT FIND ON ANY MAP.
HOOKLAND IS WHERE ALL THE WEIRDNESS YOU'VE EDITED OUT OF YOUR LIFE COMES FLOODING BACK.
HOOKLAND IS GHOST SOIL."
There are daily posts on the Hookland Guide Twitter page that mix folklore, ghost stories, cryptids and psychogeography.
Hookland inspired the name of the record. As part of the Hookland lore there is a group of people that worship pylons. Going from pylon to pylon feeling the hum and harnessing its energy for occult purposes. To quote directly from them "We followed under The Humlines. Pylon to pylon like trains running on an invisible track powered from above. At each station, we left prayers of tied rags. Our progression mapped the electric ley of the land. We weren't a cult, we were a community of awe."
In terms of a broader influence on the whole album, I'd probably say that as a band from Hertfordshire, we've always felt like we live in this liminal space that everyone passes through on the way to and from London. The Home Counties in general feel like fictional places where if you look closely, wyrdness coagulates. The liminality is very isolating. And that isolation has definitely seeped into our music with the frustration and rage that builds up. Hookland is a liminal place full of strange people and strange occurrences, so in a way it feels like we are from Hookland.
Album opener "Fear and Loathing In Stevenage" is a good introduction to the band and microcosm of their sound. After over thirty seconds of whining guitar feedback, the drums come pounding in, followed promptly the rest of the band in an unholy roar of gut-punching blackened hardcore until just over the two-minute-mark, when the band slows way down into some doom metal, followed by more guitar feedback, before a doom- and drone-informed "sludgefest" closes the track out.
"Chain of Dead Command" follows, opening with an unexpected passage of melancholic beauty that seems to evoke some overgrown and largely-forgotten cemetery in Southwell’s Hookland before the band roars in, sounding a bit like a 2014 Entombed-core throwback; roughly half-way through the track the band pulls back, evoking a similar atmosphere to the opening with an interesting passage that almost has an Isis-esque post-metal feel to it. That was a similar sonic touch-stone for me during the opening of the following number, the appropriately-named "Gutwrenching," as well as much of the sprawling "Tombs of the Blind Dregs." "Gutwrenching" features maybe my favorite moment of Pylon Cult, closing the track out with this absolutely sick mid-tempo headbanging, Worshipping-at-the-Altar-of-the-Almighty-Riff groove. It reminded me a bit of Cancer Bats’ "Lucifer’s Rocking Chair."
On the album’s back half, the short interlude "Dormant Psychosis" feels like a brain being melted by some sort of alien satellite laser weapon; "Remnants of Head" is a lengthy doomy, sludgy track that mixes in some post-metal and blackened hardcore, with a sparse, meditative passage a little more than halfway through its closing-in-on-nine-minute duration; the title track opts for a more straightforward aural assault, featuring some of the album’s heaviest moments; and finally, if one thought things were going to lighten up at all at the album’s conclusion with "Burly Haemorrhoid," the track’s opening quickly disabuses the listener of that notion! After what is effectively a continuation of "Pylon Cult," though, the band then expands the sonic vista of the track through its conclusion in a manner that recalled aspects of post-metal pioneers Neurosis.
Overall, Pylon Cult is an impressive LP that takes us to a place where the "wyrdness coagulates" and "the frustration and rage" are bursting at the seams.