Line #88 Music/Pyrrhon


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pyrrhon.jpg]]
2
3	--> ''"I did what I did. You don't like it, you can kiss my ass."''
4
5	Pyrrhon is an avant-garde DeathMetal band from Brooklyn. They play a highly chaotic, technical, and dissonant form of death metal, comparable to Music/{{Gorguts}} and Music/{{Ulcerate}} but with an approach more influenced by {{grindcore}} and MathRock. They are also notable for vocalist Doug Moore's highly poetic and misanthropic lyrics, which are mostly extremely cynical and incisive explorations of philosophy and social issues. The band has so far released four full-length albums and three [=EPs=], all to increasing critical acclaim.
6
7	Current band members:
8	* Doug Moore - Vocals, lyrics
9	* Dylan [=DiLella=] - Guitar
10	* Erik Malave - Bass
11	* Steve Schwegler - Drums
12
13	Former band members:
14	* Mike Sheen - Bass
15	* Alex Cohen - Drums
16
17	Discography:
18	* ''Fever Kingdoms'' (EP, 2009)
19	* ''An Excellent Servant But a Terrible Master'' (2011)
20	* ''The Mother of Virtues'' (2014)
21	* ''Growth Without End'' (EP, 2015)
22	* ''Running Out of Skin'' (EP, 2016)
23	* ''What Passes for Survival'' (2017)
24	* ''Abscess Time'' (2020)
25
26	!!Pyrrhon provides examples of:
27	* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: "Goat Mockery Ritual" mentions "bestial blasphemous nunrape nonsense".
28	** "The Happy Victim's Creed" has another example, with the line "'''Dr'''ug '''dr'''eam '''wr'''acked '''r'''eprobate creeps".
29	* AfterTheEnd: "Empty Tenement Spirit" and "State of Nature" both take place after an apocalyptic climate collapse.
30	* AlbumIntroTrack: "The Oracle of Nassau" is a subversion, in that while it's a very short track placed at the beginning of the album, it is by far one of the band's heaviest songs.
31	* AlbumTitleDrop: On both of their last two full lengths.
32	** On ''The Mother of Virtues'', on the TitleTrack.
33	--> ''"Fecundity is the mother of virtues"''
34	** On ''What Passes for Survival'', in "Empty Tenement Spirit".
35	--> ''"Who would mourn them, those pinioned fools''\
36	''Now spared their sorry fate''\
37	''To subsist on the bitter fruit''\
38	''That passes for survival, in these vile final days?"''
39	* AscendedMeme: Alex Cohen started the experimental grind project Chad Thundercock with Dylan [=DiLella=] and various other contributors after an encounter with a particularly unpleasant individual[[note]]according to Cohen, he was a walking caricature of the neckbeard/incel stereotype with absolutely zero social skills and an incredibly abrasive personality who threw a verbal tantrum and called Cohen a "Chad Thundercock" after Cohen had enough of being a mostly-captive audience to his tirade and called him out for his shitty beliefs and opinions[[/note]] spawned an in-joke that gave him a spark of inspiration.
40	* BedlamHouse: "Gamma Knife" is seemingly about a paranoid schizophrenic who is sent to one of these and lobotomized, and then emerges an EmptyShell.
41	* BigBrotherIsWatching: "Flesh Isolation Chamber", which is about the pervasiveness of surveillance technology in the modern day.
42	* TheBigRottenApple: The band are from New York, and their general disgust with the state of the city influences a lot of their lyrics. "New Parasite" is a good example.
43	* BoleroEffect: "Eternity in a Breath" builds from sparse, creepy guitar work in the beginning up to an utterly apocalyptic climax.
44	* BreatherEpisode: Subverted more often than not, as usually when they slow down from their usual sonic assault it only makes things exponentially creepier. Played somewhat straight on "Empty Tenement Spirit", which features a fairly melodic section in the middle that sounds almost like post-metal.
45	* BrightIsNotGood: ''The Mother of Virtues'' and ''What Passes for Survival'' both feature bright, garish colors on their album covers, but the images they depict are horrifying.
46	* BrooklynRage: They're from Brooklyn, and their music is very, very angry.
47	* CapitalismIsBad: ''The'' main theme in their lyrics, especially on ''What Passes for Survival'' and ''Abscess Time'', is the soul sucking nature of modern consumerist society, and the carnage, both physical and spiritual, it inflicts upon its subjects.
48	** On ''What Passes for Survival'', most clearly expressed in "The Invisible Hand Holds a Whip", about corporate corruption, and "The Happy Victim's Creed", which is basically about an office drone.
49	** "Down at Liberty Ashes" focuses on the plight of blue collar workers whose minds and bodies are so wrecked by their workloads that they turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, inevitably meeting unpleasant, premature ends as a result.
50	** "Human Capital" is about the way workers are mentally programmed to only measure their self-worth by their productivity, and the self-abuse they push themselves to in order to satisfy this.
51	** "Rat King Lifecycle" is a metaphorical portrayal of the type of sociopathic social Darwinist that typically rises to the top of the capitalist food chain, and the miserable end that awaits them when the backlash of their sins catches up with them.
52	* CarefulWithThatAxe: Doug Moore is very, very good at this.
53	* TheCassandra: "The Oracle of Nassau" is narrated by a homeless wretch who sees how corrupt and doomed our society has become, but is not listened to by anyone he tells.
54	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Alluded to in "The Invisible Hand Holds a Whip", as well as "Goat Mockery Ritual", which says that "Real evil sounds like the kind of thing that might require a suit and tie".
55	* CoverVersion: They covered "Crystal Mountain" by Music/{{Death}} on ''Running Out of Skin''.
56	* CrapsackWorld: Pyrrhon's general point of view in their lyrics, which is made all the more disturbing because it's pretty much all based on real life. Perhaps best encapsulated with these lines from "The Oracle of Nassau".
57	--> ''"There are no crowds out on the streets''\
58	''No neon lights, no beautiful people''\
59	''Just vacant windows staring down''\
60	''At the heaps of ash and charred rags''\
61	''And the avenues yawn between''\
62	''Ruins that spike like polygraphs''\
63	''At the half remembered husks''\
64	''In the cordwood-bundled clouds"''
65	* CrazyHomelessPeople: The narrator of "The Oracle of Nassau" seems to be one of these. There's also "Statistic Singular", which tells a possibly true story of how the narrator saw a drunken, belligerent homeless man push a college student in front of an oncoming subway train.
66	* DeadpanSnarker: Doug Moore definitely seems to be one, judging by the lyrics of "Goat Mockery Ritual".
67	* DividedStatesOfAmerica[=/=]WarIsHell: "Balkanized".
68	* {{Eagleland}}: A strong, ''strong'' type 2 is portrayed throughout their discography. Moore even described "The Unraveling" suite on ''What Passes for Survival'' as being "a lament for the vision of America I read about in history and civics books as a kid."
69	* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: A recurring theme, especially on their later material. "The Mother of Virtues" alludes to this happening as a result of overpopulation, while "Empty Tenement Spirit" is more an AfterTheEnd scenario that seems to refer to rising sea levels and climate change.
70	* EpicRocking: Some of their songs are pretty long. Examples include "Flesh Isolation Chamber" (8:24), "A Terrible Master" (8:04), "White Flag" (9:42), "Eternity in a Breath" (8:17), "The Mother of Virtues" (10:36), "Empty Tenement Spirit" (12:03), "The Lean Years" (7:24), "The Cost of Living" (8:41), and "Rat King Lifecycle" (8:19).
71	* EyesDoNotBelongThere: The cover of ''The Mother of Virtues'' shows a featureless, female humanoid figure covered in eyes and surrounded by a swarm of cockroaches.
72	* FakeOutFadeOut: "The Happy Victim's Creed" features one where it sounds like the song abruptly ends, before roaring back in for the final verse.
73	* FadingIntoTheNextSong: Bordering on SiameseTwinSongs in many cases due to how fast the band moves. "The Invisible Hand Holds a Whip" and "Goat Mockery Ritual" form a nice example.
74	* GaiasLament: "State of Nature" is a bitterly sad song pitying the humans who will be born after climate change has destroyed most of the biosphere. Even by this band's standards, it's bleak.
75	* GenreShift: Several of their songs could qualify as grindcore, and "Eternity in a Breath" is basically a detour into post-metal. "Tennessee" is pretty much a death/DoomMetal or even SludgeMetal song for the first half of its running time, possibly comparable to Music/{{Gorguts}}' "Clouded"; however, it undergoes a SongStyleShift and becomes much faster in its second half. "The Cost of Living" is structured similarly.
76	* GenreThrowback: While they formed within the tail end of the original Willowtip era, they are musically a throwback to the early 2000s Willowtip/Robotic Empire/Hydra Head/Black Market Activities noisy tech/mathcore/proto-deathcore style, and have carved out a niche playing a style that is, at this point, decidedly retro.
77	* GodIsEvil: "The Architect Confesses (Spittlestrand Hair)".
78	* GratuitousPanning: Their albums are commonly mixed with two separate guitar tracks from Dylan DiLella, one panned sharply into the left channel and the other into the right. It's not precisely ''gratuitous'', though, since it'd be difficult bordering on impossible to distinguish them without the panning.
79	* GreenAesop: Not explicitly, but environmental destruction is one of the many human evils they write about. "Empty Tenement Spirit" is arguably a portrayal of a worst case scenario for climate change, while "The Mother of Virtues" rails against human reproduction as a driver of environmental decimation.
80	* HappinessInSlavery: "The Happy Victim's Creed" essentially treats modern life in the workforce as this.
81	* HonoraryTrueCompanion: Caroline Harrison, their longtime cover artist; the band has repeatedly stated that she is an unofficial member due to her uncanny knack for coming up with cover art that flawlessly evokes a given album's themes and general deep understanding of what the band is about.
82	* HorribleHistoryMetal: "Turing's Revenge" is mostly about the forced chemical castration and subsequent suicide of Alan Turing for his homosexuality.
83	* HumansAreBastards: Basically the main theme of the band.
84	* IndecipherableLyrics: Even when you have the lyrics sheet in front of you, it can be borderline impossible to decipher what's being sung sometimes. Which is something of a shame, as they're very well-written lyrics.
85	* IronicName: The song "Motivational Speaker II", which is about self-hatred.
86	* LastNoteNightmare: It'd be easier to list the songs that don't use this, but "Eternity in a Breath" has to have one of the creepiest examples, ending with the sound of the vocalist just ''breathing heavily into the microphone''.
87	** "Empty Tenement Spirit" suddenly cuts off, leaving us with what sounds like heavy chains being slammed against the floor again and again and somebody yelling in pain before the song, and the album, finally ends.
88	* LeadDrummer: Former drummer Alex Cohen is famous for his [[AttentionDeficitCreatorDisorder multitude of projects past and present]], prolific session work, incredible technical ability, and, as of 2017, his online lesson videos. New drummer Steve Schwegler has also earned substantial renown for his performances on Pyrrhon's albums.
89	* LongestSongGoesLast: As of 2022, they do this on two of their four full-lengths and one of their [=EPs=].
90	** Played straight:
91	*** ''The Mother of Virtues'' closes with "The Mother of Virtues" (10:36).
92	*** ''Growth Without End'' closes with "Turing's Revenge" (4:38), making it their only EP to play the trope straight.
93	*** ''What Passes for Survival'' closes with "Empty Tenement Spirit" (12:03).
94	** Averted or inverted:
95	*** Their 2009 demo is an inversion twice over, with the opening "Routinization of Charisma" (5:05) being the longest track and "Pascal's Wager" (4:22) being the shortest (by a whole second!).
96	*** On ''Fever Kingdoms'', the longest track is actually "God's Parabola" (5:44), in the middle of the EP.
97	*** On ''An Excellent Servant but a Terrible Master'', the penultimate "Flesh Isolation Chamber" (8:24) edges out the closing "A Terrible Master" (8:04) by a mere twenty seconds.
98	*** ''Running Out of Skin'' is an inversion: the opening "Statistic Singular" (6:30) is the longest track.
99	*** On ''Abscess Time'', the closing "Rat King Lifecycle" (8:19) is only the second longest song; "The Cost of Living" (8:42) is longer.
100	* LossOfIdentity: "The Happy Victim's Creed" is about how capitalism does this to people by forcing them to sacrifice all their dreams and aspirations for the sake of a stable job.
101	* LoudnessWar: Averted. Since Colin Marston was involved in the mastering of most of their releases, the dynamic range of their songs are generally at [=DR8=] or higher. In fact, they've never released a song with a range lower than [=DR7=], and as of 2022, their most dynamic release, the EP ''Fever Kingdoms'', scores [=DR13=].
102	* LyricalColdOpen: "The Oracle of Nassau" and "Implant Fever".
103	* LyricalDissonance: "Goat Mockery Ritual" is no less fearsome than the band's usual material, but the lyrics are a sarcastic attack on overly edgy bands in the metal community rather than the band's usual condemnations of mankind and modern society.
104	* MadOracle: "The Oracle of Nassau", written from the point of view of an unmedicated, mentally ill homeless person who truly believes in the profundity of his ramblings and is frustrated by what he sees as the rest of the world's inability to grasp his revelations.
105	* MadnessMantra: This line, repeated over and over at the end of "The Happy Victim's Creed".
106	--> ''"Make me what I am''\
107	''Make me the servant I was meant to be"''
108	** And another in "Cancer Mantra".
109	--> ''"Always keep growing and growing and changing''\
110	''Never stop spreading"''
111	** "Balkanized" has "It's not personal" repeated several times.
112	** "New Parasite" has "This too shall pass" said after every line for the first half of the song.
113	* {{Metalcore}}: Has extremely prominent mathcore elements.
114	* MetalScream: Doug Moore employs a mixture of traditional death growls and high pitched shrieks reminiscent of black metal. He also sometimes uses cleaner, shouted vocals more indebted to hardcore punk and noise rock, like on "Tennessee".
115	* MindScrew: Their music is incredibly dense and cacophonous, and their lyrics tend to be very cryptic.
116	* MinisculeRocking: Some of Pyrrhon's songs are short enough to approach {{Grindcore}} territory. None of the songs on ''Growth Without End'' are longer than 5 minutes, with "Forget Yourself" being under 90 seconds, and then there's "The Unraveling" suite on ''What Passes for Survival'', whose three songs put together (which collectively run for some 5:12) aren't even as long as the next track, "Empty Tenement Spirit" (which admittedly is their longest song to date at 12:03). "The Oracle of Nassau" is only 1:26 in length, and their shortest song, "Ashes to Alveoli", is only 33 seconds.
117	* NewSoundAlbum: ''Abscess Time'' downplays the death metal and mathcore elements and adds in significant elements of post-hardcore and noise rock.
118	* NoiseRock: They are influenced by acts like Helmet, Unsane, and Shellac, and they took a substantially more noise rock-oriented direction on ''Abscess Time''.
119	* NothingIsScarier: The cover of ''Running Out of Skin'' is just a photo of a darkened subway tunnel.
120	** When the band slows down their tempo and cuts the distortion down, this is commonly the effect, especially since a GenreSavvy listener knows it's only a temporary letup in intensity. Examples include "Eternity in a Breath", "Tennessee", and "The Cost of Living".
121	* NothingPersonal: The line "It's not personal" is said repeatedly in "Balkanized".
122	* OnceAnEpisode: So far, all of their full-lengths close with a long song about the apocalypse.
123	* OverpopulationCrisis: "The Mother of Virtues" is about this. The final lines of the song (quoted at the bottom of the page) seem to show it destroying the human race.
124	* PrecisionFStrike: Occasionally used. "The Happy Victim's Creed" has a particularly good example.
125	--> ''"[[DrowningMySorrows Drinksop spirit drowns the past]]''\
126	''He just wanted to do his best''\
127	''But trying only wore him thin''\
128	''Fuck off, you didn't live through any of this"''
129	** "The Oracle of Nassau" provides another good one, though in the song itself it's borderline indecipherable.
130	--> ''"Why won't you fucking listen to me?''\
131	''I'm so close to finding the right words''\
132	''Look past the sores and the slurring tongue''\
133	''And take my reality into your heart"''
134	* ProtestSong: Many of their songs could be described as protest songs, albeit very cryptic and nihilistic ones.
135	* PurpleProse: Most of their lyrics, though they're much better written than most examples of this trope. They're almost like a secular Music/DeathspellOmega.
136	* {{Sampling}}: Mostly of speeches and dialogue from movies.
137	** "Down at Liberty Ashes" samples ''Film/TaxiDriver'' in its intro and outro.
138	** "Another Day in Paradise" samples Creator/NedBeatty's famous speech from ''Film/{{Network}}'' about how finance is God.
139	** "Trash Talk Landfill" samples Music/TomLehrer from his live introduction to "We Will All Go Together When We Go" (found on ''Music/AnEveningWastedWithTomLehrer'') saying, "Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
140	* ScavengerWorld: "State of Nature" is about the future generations of humans who will be forced to survive in one after climate change causes a global biosphere collapse.
141	* SchoolyardBullyAllGrownUp: "Rat King Lifecycle", along with BeingEvilSucks: when you're the same scumbag you were as a kid decades later, life catches up with you and the trash you surround yourself with will ensure that the weight of your terrible life choices and shitty actions will drag you to the bottom.
142	* SelfBackingVocalist: Doug Moore sometimes layers his vocal tracks on top of each other, often to disorienting effect. "Cancer Mantra" is a good example of this.
143	* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Their lyrics, many of their song titles, arguably even their name (see ShoutOut below). Example song titles include "Teuchnikskreis" (a [[BilingualBonus German]] {{pun}} coined by Andre Baier to refer to the paradoxical, self-perpetuating cycle of using technology to solve problems caused by technology; it is a {{portmanteau}} of ''Technikskreis'', or "technology circle", and ''Teufelskreis'', literally translating as "devil circle" and the rough equivalent of the English idioms "catch-22" or "vicious cycle") and "Solastagia" (a form of depression caused by environmental changes; coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht from the Latin ''sōlācium'' root of our ''solace'', and the Greek ''-algia'', or ''grief''). This is one of several traits that places them in the company of bands like Music/DeathspellOmega and Music/JuteGyte.
144	* ShoutOut: They are named for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhonism Pyrrhonism]], the first known philosophical school of scepticism, which taught the pursuit of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia eudaimonia]] (εὐδαιμονία, a state of excellence and inner wellbeing brought about by exercising virtue, wisdom, and rationality) by achieving [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia ataraxia]] (ἀταραξία, a state of equanimity) through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoche epoché]] (ἐποχή, suspension of judgement). A Pyrrhon is, by extension, a follower of Pyrrhonism. In turn, Pyrrhonism is named for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho Pyrrho of Elis]] (Πύρρων ὁ Ἠλεῖος, ca. 360 BCE-ca. 270 BCE), who is credited as the first Greek sceptic philosopher and the founder of Pyrrhonism. However, as Pyrrho left no surviving writings, and even the writings of his pupil [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timon_of_Phlius Timon of Philus]] (Τίμων ὁ Φλιάσιος, ca. 320 BCE - ca. 235 BCE) only survive in fragments, the contents of Pyrrho's own philosophy are to some extent a matter of hearsay and conjecture.
145	* SiameseTwinSongs: All the songs in "The Unraveling".
146	* SignatureStyle: Dissonant, mathy riffing, lots of unusual time signatures, abrupt changes in tempo, compositions that heavily rely on improv, occasional clean passages that sound borderline atonal, and manic vocals with surprisingly erudite lyrics.
147	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: So far on the cynical end that you'll forget the idealistic side ever even existed.
148	* SophisticatedAsHell: Their lyrics are very erudite, but they don't shy from the occasional PrecisionFStrike.
149	* SopranoAndGravel: Not exactly, but Moore uses the "gravel and gravel" by mixing the usual Type 2 MetalScream of DeathMetal with a Type 3 that would be more expected in BlackMetal, which winds up having a similar (albeit harsher) effect. Occasionally, he also uses what might be best described as ''harsh singing'', as in the first half of "Tennessee"; this makes Moore's shift to Type 3 screaming all the more frightening when it happens, even though most listeners probably know it's coming.
150	* SpokenWordInMusic: Occasionally, mostly done using sampling. "White Flag" has a particularly creepy example, with the music slowing to a halt as Doug Moore whispers ''"This is the world... we made for ourselves."''
151	* StartMyOwn: Doug Moore has several, namely Weeping Sores (his avant-garde death/doom project with Steve on drums) and Glorious Depravity (his OSDM project with members of Mutilation Rites and Woe). Subverted with Imperial Triumphant, as Alex and Erik were not founders, and Imperial Triumphant also predated Pyrrhon. Seputus is another aversion, as their own existence predates Pyrrhon in spite of their activity being fairly limited before Steve joined Pyrrhon.
152	* StopAndGo: Used at the end of "The Happy Victim's Creed".
153	* SubduedSection: "Empty Tenement Spirit" has a surprisingly melodic, somewhat post-metal sounding section in the middle, which serves as a genuine BreatherEpisode for the song.
154	* SurrealHorror: Musically, they're so disorienting that it usually takes you multiple listens just to decipher what the hell is going on, and lyrically they're like a less theological Deathspell Omega.
155	* TakeThat: Several.
156	** "Goat Mockery Ritual" is one of these to extreme metal bands (in particular, black metal bands) who appropriate Satanic and Nazi-esque imagery purely for shock value without understanding what those symbols really mean or even living up to their own hype, as well as a more general one to certain aspects of the black metal fandom.
157	** "Another Day in Paradise" is an attack on the romanticizing of the StarvingArtist and the "exposure bucks" mentality that allows people to justify the exploitation of creative professionals and condemn their protests as being jaded or only in it for the money.
158	* TakingYouWithMe: "Rat King Lifecycle", a song promising the painful deaths of the ruling class as a direct result of their own blind apathy to the societal and environmental carnage wrought by their lifestyles, has this sort of tone to it.
159	* TechnicalDeathMetal: Of the weird, dissonant Gorguts variety, with a healthy dose of mathcore akin to the Willowtip, Robotic Empire, and Black Market Activities bands of the early 2000s.
160	* TextlessAlbumCover: All of them after ''The Mother of Virtues''.
161	* UncommonTime: Used quite often to add to the general impenetrability of their sound.
162	* VillainSong: "Cancer Mantra" is an unusual example in that it's basically an ode to a tumor.
163	* WretchedHive: Urban decay is a recurring theme of theirs, heavily influenced by their living in Brooklyn. The lyrics listed under CrapsackWorld are an example of this perspective, as is "Statistic Singular".
164	----
165	--> ''"O, rejoice!''\
166	''For soon the world will burst with wombs''\
167	''The sun will claw for the trees in vain''\

Context Music / Pyrrhon