7

+++PRE-ORDER+++

Release Date: 20 November

(All physical vinyl copies comes with download codes)

Pharaoh Overlord

'7'

Defying convention and expectations once again, Pharaoh Overlord's 7 rides in auspicious, possessed of the gleaming high octane euphoria that transforms a dreary everyday into a triumph-over-adversity movie montage, swaggering in with high-saturation synth-rock, dressed in a custom satin bomber jacket for euphoric big-screen moments that never existed, salvation narrated by the death growl of Aaron Turner and guest falsetto from Richard Dawson.

The number 7 is a cross-cultural signifier of good luck and divine completion, and if this promises much, 7 delivers, as Jussi Lehtisalo and Tomi Leppänen's self-proclaimed "dream album". "This is, finally, the real Pharaoh Overlord," promises Jussi, “I can generate demos easily, but working with a producer, it’s reached a destination we really wanted.”

Now, over 20 albums deep, Lehtisalo proclaims Pharaoh Overlord ready to breakthrough, having brought in big guns on the buttons for the first time, with notable Finnish experimental black metal band Oranssi Pazuzu's Juho Vanhanen on production, and Niko Lehdontie mixing. Together they have polished the chrome of this synth-driven death-metal hyper-rock into a high-gloss mirror-shine, to "something like Justice’s debut album with the raw and disturbing atmospheres of Scott Walker’s Drift-era sound", says Vanhanen.

Pharaoh Overlord are consistent in one field: nailing the joyful thrill of being utterly unpredictable. Reliably unreliable when it comes to sticking to a genre, they are magpie-like music heads without a care for the stultifying brand-building best practice of dullard music industry proscriptions, describing their process as "like playing the Oblique Strategies but without the cards". This tracks with the anti-strategies of their parent band Circle, who once loaned out their name to another band for a year, corrupting their own legacy. Beginning as a full group, they now have two permanent members, but in their time have rendered glossy synthwave, whitewater motorik, idiosyncratic overdriven art rock, bombed-out psychedelia and more, always dancing fleetfooted across genre, as parent band Circle do, too. "They simply go wherever the music needs to go," says Dawson, who is both collaborator and superfan. "If the surface-sound of the albums change from record to record the spirit remains the same." Ever a band as anti-brand, this is of course, not their seventh album. 7 has been five years in the making – a far longer gestation than most other albums could afford. It is their Aja on a collapsed timeline, coming to fruition two decades after the band's inauguration, with a bigger, bolder sound than ever before, taking inspiration from A.G. Cook and Charli XCX.

This sound is augmented by the seismic contributions of vocalists from their all-star extended universe of friends and collaborators. Once again, they are joined by the peerless death metal growl of the man most likely to call himself their third member, Aaron Turner (Sumac/Neurosis/Old Man Gloom) and if you never thought 80s electronic rock needed death growl, think again. Turner's squall tells of heady romance, pastoral scenery, and macabre dreams, across four of the five tracks. He is joined on anthemic electronic pop hit for the ages, 'Arms of None', by 21st century folk oracle and peerless earworm writer, Richard Dawson. Dawson has been collaborating as an official member of Circle since their album Henki, and here steps in with full-voiced falsetto, transcendent and glorious part Michael McDonald, part Judas Priest, although he describes it differently: "I wanted to offer a counterpoint to Aaron's incredible vocal," he says, "the most contrasting flavour I could do was my version of Buck's Fizz".

Opener 'Matriarch' is the herald for this experiment in contrast: the only instrumental, faultlessly warm glow of a walking pulse and radiant progression. 'The Man Laid Low' speeds along the asphalt, Turner gone demon mode in the passenger seat. A semblance of storytelling emerges in the reflective 'War of Habit', Turner's guitar pushing through from the other side. Credits roll for 'Under Distant Sun', which comes on like a rejected 21st century Laibach soundtrack to Drive, and includes Finnish folk musician, Arto Järvelä playing the esseharpa, a Finnish keyed fiddle, hinting at a future yet to come.

Possessed as it is with timeless electronic pop moments, 7 is perhaps the best place to begin that Pharaoh Overlord have ever released, infused with the positivity and enthusiasm that douses every project from this particular Finnish set: "What is relevant now, it will be dead tomorrow," says Jussi, "We don't have a destination, we're just trying to do something interesting with the everyday, so that life can be just that little bit happier."

---