Pharaoh and Cruz Del Sur, the beginnings

By Enrico Leccese, owner of Cruz Del Sur Music. Pharaoh plays a very important role in the history/profile of Cruz Del Sur Music. Not only was their debut album After The Fire the label’s first release back in 2003, also, they are the band

By Enrico Leccese, owner of Cruz Del Sur Music.

Cover Artwork by JP Fournier

Pharaoh plays a very important role in the history/profile of Cruz Del Sur Music. Not only was their debut album After The Fire the label’s first release back in 2003, also, they are the band with the highest number of releases (6) on the label itself.

They also introduced me to some of the finest people I have been working with, especially Matt Crooks (from Division, and now Pharaoh’s live second guitar player) who has recorded all their albums except After the Fire and French artist JP Fournier responsible for all their cover artwork.

I have had the pleasure to meet the guys several times, though I am still missing to know bassist Chris Kerns in person. Through these years I often had a drink with Matt Johnsen and Chris Maycock during their visits to Europe, and with Tim Aymar when the band played Germany’s Keep It True festival in 2008.

The funny anecdote about how we knew each other is that in the late nineties I was living in Argentina running a label (Icarus) to which Chris M. submitted his band Dawnbringer. In his letter, he also mentioned he had a side-project with some other guys and they “hired” Mr. Aymar to sing a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Aces High” featured on Chris’ own Maiden America: Iron Maiden Tribute release (Twilight Records). At the time Control Denied’s only album was just released and Tim’s marvellous performance was under everyone’s eyes. Anyway, we were blown away by the cover and saw so much potential in the band that we decided to release Dawnbringer's Catharsis Instinct in 2000 just to be sure to pin Pharaoh for a future release! Who would have known Dawnbringer became such a “big” band after a decade!

I would say Pharaoh gave Cruz Del Sur a strong and authoritarian profile since the beginning of our collaboration, showing the label was no joke. They were the band from which everything started, so I can never be grateful enough for that Dawnbringer promo!

Pharaoh - The Longest Night

An Autothrall Win. Though it's not quite so pristine and re-listenable as its own successor Be Gone, The Longest Night makes a number of improvements over the Pharaoh debut, and inches towards the band's current sound with class.

An Autothrall Win. Originally published here.

Cover Artwork by JP Fournier.

Though it's not quite so pristine and re-listenable as its own successor Be Gone, The Longest Night makes a number of improvements over the Pharaoh debut, and inches towards the band's current sound with class. Once again, we've got a group not willing to merely settle for the part and parcel of power metal tropes, but attempting to make strides in the field that help refresh and revitalize the form, keeping it relevant and half way intelligent while celebrating its roots. Not that a number of the band's forebears haven't done the same, but while Omen, Manowar and Virgin Steele might have provided some of the base ingredients for the Pharaoh recipe, alongside overseas legends like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, this album at no point seems needlessly backwards or nostalgic. It sounds like it looks, blue lightning lashing out at the masses marching forward in sublimation.

Matt Johnsen dials up the melody here even further, with a lot of his dual lines trumping After the Fire in terms of their sheer infectiousness, and the rhythm guitars through a lot of the record seem like a better backdrop, splayed more into open, ringing chords that better carry the man's natural electricity. The backing riffs are not all that distinct themselves, yet superior to what he was writing a few years prior, and better conductors for the almost unbearable lightness of the leads' being. Not to mention that the general mix of the album helps enforce this glittering glaze of harmony. The drums and guitars are better balanced, and though Aymar slices straight through with the bold grit of his inflection, it all feels somewhat more progressive and potent simultaneously, even on a piece like "In the Violet Fire" where the band is alternating between its passages of cleaner guitars and more emotional vocals with the rushes of melodic speed metal that feel like later 80s Fates Warning infused with Iron Maiden at their prime, only more surgical and technical in how the melodies flood the listeners' brains.

I enjoy more or less every song on this album, whether it's the straight power of "Fighting" which almost sounds like something Hammerfall might write, the frenetic "I Am the Hammer" which at times reminded me of Germans Rage, or "The Longest Night" itself which provides a glorious evolutionary stopgap between Number of the Beast and Awaken the Guardian. Probably the only exceptions for me would be the two lengthier pieces, opener "Sunrise" and "By the Night Sky". Both have plenty of choice riffs and moments, and dynamically they don't indulge in tiring repetition, but I feel like they could have been snipped off at 4-5 minutes and better kept my interest; not to mention that I question the logic of putting "Sunrise" up front when there were far better choices strewn throughout the album that would hook the audience without any chance of growing dull in their depths. Otherwise, it's pretty goddamn consistent, even the instrumental finale "Never Run" succeeds in the video game/chase scene melodies coursing through its peppier riffs; and the guest leads via Chris Poland (ex-Megadeth) and Jim Dofka are tasteful and flush with their surroundings.

Tim Aymar was already a strong component on the first album, but with The Longest Night he too surpasses himself, with a wider range of emotional heights and pitch. Much easier to pick out individual, memorable lines than After the Fire, even in the mere verses of the songs, though they're not so bright, meticulous and haunting as those throughout Be Gone. He's especially potent when he's tracking off against himself, swapping lines in songs like "I Am the Hammer" where the airy reverb and effects built a strong contrast to the pounding of the rhythm guitar, but he's husky and dark enough that he even manages to stand out against the group's central, driving characteristic: Johnsen's melodic tsunami. All in all, a killer effort with nearly every component polished and spit-shined to a simmering perfection, and songwriting of depth and courage which, even at its most derivative feels like far more than a retrospect tribute. To think that they would get even better...

Pharaoh!

By Dan Lawrence.


Power metal needs its evangelical wing. Truly.

But despite that need, power metal fans, particularly in America, can be an odd, awkward bunch. We're fired by the rightness of our cause, of course, but we know that if we push too hard, the blowback of ridicule and tuning out is always waiting just inches below the surface. Good music should always speak for itself, but some styles will always need an extra push to really connect.

Given that context, Pharaoh is pretty much the perfect band: they don't fit most of the flowery preconceptions that so many people hold about power metal. They don't sing about elves or fairies; none of their songs are medieval campfire singalongs; and they don't treat neoclassical shred as a sacred icon. In fact, over the course of their four unimpeachable albums, Pharaoh have established themselves as the quintessential exemplar of that ambiguous, mongrel genre: "US power metal."

But to whom, really, does Pharaoh compare? The short answer - and the real reason they're deserving of the red carpet treatment - is, "No one, or at least not exactly." Truly, they are difficult to pin an exact match on, but if they are unique, that's not to say they are without peer. They share a similar stoutness and traditional stomp with a band like Argus, while also resonating with some of the steelier Priest-isms of Primal Fear. At their most dramatic, it's not too much a stretch to hear echoes of Sanctuary, although Pharaoh also shares with The Lord Weird Slough Feg the ability to sound both playful and deadly serious at once. Hell, at times it even seems like Pharaoh sounds a bit like what might happen if Cynic's Focus had been a power metal album.

But their comrades are not what define them, particularly when the fusion of talents in the band is equal part unlikely and unavoidable. In fact, with the partial exception of High Spirits, I like Chris Black in Pharaoh far better than in any of his other projects. Similarly, while Pharaoh would be next to nothing without Matt Johnsen's seemingly effortless guitar, his work with Black in Dawnbringer rarely hits home for me. And despite his overwhelmingly evident skill, I never particularly cared for Tim Aymar in the context of Control Denied. Through whatever alchemical mystery, Pharaoh is the ideal venue for these disparate talents.

Cover Artwork by JP Fournier

This is an appropriate time of year to be writing about Pharaoh. When doubt, anxiety, and depression claw, all music is not created equal in its restorative capability. Plenty of power metal leans a little too positive and bright to feel authentic as self-medication. When you're low, the last thing you need is something high that feels like it's lying to you. Pharaoh, though, is chemically incapable of abetting wallowing. The music is too strident, stirring, and invigorating, but never anything less than truthful.

Because of these reasons and many others, Bury the Light is probably my favorite Pharaoh album (although The Longest Night makes a damned close play). More importantly, any time I listen to it feels like a righteous act of self-care. From the absurdly grandiose "Leave Me Here to Dream" (with its none-more-potent "No, not tonight / No, no, no" chorus the foil of Johnsen's rapid-fire uplift throughout) to the somehow Zeppelin-esque "The Year of the Blizzard" and the beautifully elastic rhythmic feint of "Castles in the Sky," Bury the Light is a monument to the power of music to awe and inspire. The outro that reprises the ending of "The Spider's Thread," however, is the masterstroke that truly marks the album of Pharaoh's most complete vision. That people aren't breaking down your door every other week to make sure your personal copy is still in good working order is some sort of crime.

"The Spider's Thread" reaches its climax with the line "Oh, can I ever hope to recover?" Although the song's answer to that question is not necessarily a positive one, "Bury the Light" on the whole has proven again and again to be one of those rare magical albums that always helps to keep my mind from going to a dark place. Sometimes you listen to music because it mirrors the mood you're already in; sometimes you listen to music because it creates in you the mood you'd like to be in. Pharaoh is ceaselessly the latter - a steady salve and companion.

If that doesn't inspire you to evangelism, then nothing will. Come, sisters and brothers: let's go out into the world together.