Pharaoh - Ten Years (EP)

September 28, 2011

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Because Pharaoh is one of my all-time favorite heavy metal bands, I am incapable of providing a unbiased review, just as I am incapable of finding Shannon McIntosh, who is both a racecar driver and absurdly beautiful, anything less than the single most attractive woman in history. I will attempt to be objective when reviewing Ten Years by imagining that it is actually a Hammerfall EP. If somebody asked me to review Ms. McIntosh’s driving skills, I would imagine that she looks like Danica Patrick and proceed from there.

If this were a Cannibal Corpse album review, I wouldn’t bother stating that there are some kinda-technical Florida death metal riffs with some really good Corpsegrinder vox. That would be patronizing to everybody except for the Attack Attack! fan who stumbled on this site after asking Google ‘what does real heavy metal sound like?’ But, because life is unjust in so many ways, most people have either never heard Pharoah’s music or have never heard of them at all. I am therefore going to describe in rough terms what the Ten Years EP and any other Pharoah release sound like.

Pharaoh sounds a lot like Brave New World era Iron Maiden. Tim Aymar’s vocals are a bit rougher than Bruce Dickinson’s. The riffs are just a tad more progressive and a tad more unconventional than Maiden’s, but they are drawing from the same framework of melodies and harmonies. The songwriting and riffing is at worst rock-solid and at best, genius. Lyrically, Pharaoh’s songs tend to be about more personal topics than Maiden’s, although Pharaoh will occasionally drop in a song about fantasy or historical topics.

I have to admit that I’ve basically failed to be objective about the Ten Years EP. It’s Pharaoh, it’s awesome, and I think that most metalheads should buy it. The most objective things I can say are that “Ten Years” and “Nothing I Can Say” are good enough that they could have been included on any Pharaoh full-length. “When We Fly” is the most upbeat song Pharaoh has ever recorded, but neither it nor “Reflection and the Inevitable Future” are quite as good as the songs on any Pharaoh full-length. The cover of Slayer’s “Tormentor” is interesting because Pharaoh managed to round off all of the original’s hard edges and aggression and come up with some interesting vocal melodies in the process. “White Light” is completely brilliant and is the best song on the EP by far.

I should point out that “White Light” is actually a New Model Army song. I spent about 5 minutes conducting extensive research and have now remembered that Sepultura, Anacrusis, and Skyclad have all also covered New Model Army songs. All of those bands have released true heavy metal classics, which means that I can now say with 100% certainty that any metal band that covers New Model Army is awesome and will release at least one classic album. For the three of you there who are both statistics fans and metalheads, I’m fully aware that 4 data points is not a statistically significant sample size, so please don’t break your fingers in a nerd-rage while typing an email about how I’m wrong. Also, I haven’t ever actually listened to Skyclad, but Sabbat was pretty good and so I’m not going to let those little niggling issues get in the way of my making a grandiose declaration. That’s how much I like Pharaoh’s music.

— Richard Street-Jammer

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HEAR TEN YEARS

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