Late last year, NYDM brutal death metal veterans Pyrexia returned with their sixth full-length album, Gravitas Maximus.  They had recently announced the new album and honestly, it came out of nowhere-I was not expecting them to release a Covid album.  I guess since their last album Unholy Requiem, was released in 2018, they wanted to get the ball rolling on a new album and get it out.  I enjoyed their prior album, which I reviewed here, and when I came back to Internal Bleeding in 2018 for the Bloodletting Tour, to have Pyrexia on the tour and hanging out with longtime friend and sole original member, guitarist Chris Basile was simply outstanding for me.  Pyrexia has remained one of my top death metal bands and seeing the band in their infancy, many years ago, as a demo band, playing live-well let’s just say the band and I have a lot of history together.

Pyrexia has once again released a streamlined album, 8 songs clocking in at 24 minutes there is no rest for the wicked as the band goes into “We Are Many”.  The song has clips from my favorite movie of all time, The Exorcist.  While the clip is still going the opening cymbal hits and the guitar comes in-a slow build-up to what is about to destroy your soul as a monstrous blast beat erupts and vocalist Jim Beach goes more guttural and then the Holy Shit moment is right away at right before the 2-minute mark.  Isolated guitar moment, cymbal hit, and then boom right into a monster groove.  The band even incorporates an 808 bass bomb drop.  This song is so lethal I want them to open their live shows with this.  Because that monster Holy Shit groove moment will have bodybags slamming into one another and the riff is super catchy.  “Apostles to the Grave” gets right into a blast beat and more monster groove riffing.  Blasts getting into almost gravity blast moments and more outstanding riffing and Mr. Beach berating us with his vocals and going into more guttural tones.

“The Day the Earth Shook (Survival of the Fittest)” has a slamming groove moment within the first 30 seconds of the song as the double bass will murder your soul and perform The Steiner Recliner on you, ripping your spine right out of your body in 0.0 seconds.  That tasty groove riff will return at the 1.40 moment and then the song meanders into another groove passage and the riffing on this song…damn I cannot get enough of how razor precise it is.  Bass guitar is audible, plucky at times, and sounds excellent.  “Rule of 2” has outstanding drums, riffs and bass guitar in the beginning, as the groove is evident immediately.  Almost a little start and stop jumpiness to the riffing.  Rhythmically speaking, this song is on point and creates an extra layer of power, which is ferocious and violent sounding.  The song will get into some creative blasting at the end of the song as Beach growls like he’s feasting on entrails.

The cover art is an interesting theme with the Kaiju-sized gorillas wrecking- havoc, everywhere and Pyrexia’s Gravitas Maximus has many positives going for it, as well as some differences from their prior album.  For one, the production on this album is monstrous.  The guitar riffs really pop out on this album.  Razor-sharp with deliberate precision and catchiness.  Drums, bass, and vocals all mixed in excellently.  There were some production hiccups on the prior album, which have been shored up on this.  The band opting to have 808 bass drops on this album further makes this album even more brutal, than some of their past releases.  This also helps the band to continue to stay relevant with the younger fans.  The newer bands over the last several years, especially on Unique Leader Records roster of some international brutal slam death metal bands, incorporate the bass drops so I actually, think this was a smart decision Pyrexia made to include those.  The songwriting and increase in the brutality department make this a juggernaut of an album.  For me, this is their best album since 1997’s System of the Animal.  Buy or Die!

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments