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Pencil Lead Syringe > Pencil Lead Syringe > Reviews
Pencil Lead Syringe - Pencil Lead Syringe

I Like Glass Casket Too... - 99%

Brutality_Junkie, March 17th, 2013

I’m often astonished by the number of metalheads I talk to who aren’t familiar with Pencil Lead Syringe. It makes me cringe to think that any sizable portion of the metal community may not be familiar with the band’s legendary debut ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’, still one of the most savage/very best brutal death metal records I’ve ever heard. Perhaps the reason for their relative obscurity is much like the reason for Terminally Your Aborted Ghost’s obscurity; both bands made absolute mockeries of whatever was purporting to be ‘dark’ in brutal death metal with only a single album. ‘Slowly Peeling The Flesh From The Inside Of A Folded Hand’ and ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’ share a similar uninhibited nihilistic rage that most bands in the Death Metal scene can’t even fathom, let alone express musically. There’s a huge difference between an album about the deepest, darkest cesspools of man’s psyche and an album that was born of that psychosis. It’s not hard to see which camp Pencil Lead Syringe’s releases fall into.

The only hurdle for a band that peaks as early as Terminally Your Aborted Ghost or Pencil Lead Syringe is simply following their debut opus. I’m happy to say after listening to the self titled EP several times since it was released back in May that this is indeed a worthy successor to ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’, albeit a much different release in one key aspect; the mix. ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’s mix was disorienting and murky, a thick cloud of certain demise. What it lacked in full on clarity was irrelevant compared to the bone chilling atmosphere it gave the record. ‘Pencil Lead Syringe’ on the other hand has a much cleaner mix. The guitar, bass, drums and vocals are all exceptionally integrated with one another and given equal time to shine. However, this comes at the cost of ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’s atmospheric thickness. Not to say that this EP is in any way lacking atmosphere or presence but it’s not at all the same. ‘Pencil Lead Syringe’ creates a palpable sense of unease with the discordant precision of every note, acting as equal parts sonic hacksaw and sledgehammer.

If I’m being honest though, I still prefer the impenetrable filth of ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’s mix. Does that mean that I dislike ‘Pencil Lead Syringe’? Absolutely not. It’s really almost impossible for me to not prefer ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’ simply because when I first heard that album, it IMMEDIATELY resonated as one of my Top 10 brutal death metal records of all time. Make no mistake, Pencil Lead Syringe is as amazing as ever and they aren’t going anywhere.

I’ve been of the mindset that the members of Pencil Lead Syringe are some of the most talented musicians in all of death metal for some time now and this EP does nothing but reinforce that notion a hundred fold. Ramon Mercado is easily one of the best modern guttural death metal vocalists in the genre today but there's more to it than that; Ramon’s vocal presence is as close to Matti Way as an American vocalist has come in years. His gutturals are indeed different but no less distinctive, powerful and captivating than Matti’s. Listening to the downright insane vocal delivery on this EP there’s no doubt in my mind that Ramon belongs to a very select cadre of Death Metal frontmen with the likes of Phlegeton of Wormed and A.J. Magana; The day Ramon stops growling will be a very sad day for death metal as a whole. Thankfully, that’s not going to happen any time soon.

On the stringed side of the equation, Chris Philippsen’s guitar and bass licks on this EP are staggering. The tone of each riff ranges from hectic and delirious to skull crushing and downright sinister. Every single note of every single song on this EP resonates an undeniable sensation, which is one of the reasons I loved Pencil Lead Syringe to begin with. Even if the tone of a song is just complete hatred, the rawness of the band’s compositions made every single beat reverberate with that feeling. The songs on ‘Pencil Lead Syringe’ are no exception. The riff progressions Philippsen has come up with are nothing short of genius. They’re dissonant, bestial, haunting and so intelligently put together it almost hurts. What’s more, the tone of both the guitar and bass on this record are pitch perfect, so every single riff is that much more potent.

Last, but certainly not least, Gerry Flores’ drumming finishes off this equation in a dashing combination of speed, precision, and creativity. Gerry can certainly blast with the best of them but I often find the most interesting parts of his performance when he slows down a bit and delivers some downright fascinating double bass and fill patterns. If anything, it’s the final piece of the Pencil Lead Syringe puzzle that allows the masterful vocals, guitar riffs and bass licks to fully set in. When all is said and done and everything comes together, ‘Pencil Lead Syringe’ ends up as the best EP of the year, without question. All 7 songs are a perfect mixture of violent, beautiful and then some.

Pencil Lead Syringe has been one of my favorite bands in the modern Death Metal scene for some time now and this EP is the second major release of what I can only hope is a long, fruitful career for these Inland Empire virtuosos. From recording one of my all time favorite brutal death metal records as their debut to releasing this amazing EP, Pencil Lead Syringe is a band that never lets me down. Whenever a group I used to love ends up destroying their reputation over some misguided ‘experiment’, I think of this Californian trio and smile. Even with a significant change in mixing from ‘Suffocated And Embalmed’, Pencil Lead Syringe hasn’t lost even a fraction of their trademark originality and heaviness. Whenever the second full length is announced, I’ll be one of the first to pre-order a copy.

Here’s to Ramon, Chris and Gerry, passionate musicians with the sky as their limit. Keep doing exactly what it is you do fellas. You’ve got it made. m/

Why can't things stay the same forever? :( - 76%

MutantClannfear, August 15th, 2012

Hey guys, remember Pencil Lead Syringe? That one brutal death metal band that combined an extremely murky, trashy production job with dark, twisted riffs and created what was essentially Teitanblood with slams and pig squeals? Well, for their new EP, they've evidently decided that bad production was, in fact, objectively bad, and moved away from it in favor of a much cleaner sound. While I can understand the desire to move towards a sound that's a lot less sonically harsh, the end result is something that, while good, doesn't exactly reach the level of greatness found on Suffocated and Embalmed.

Pencil Lead Syringe have decidedly changed a lot here. The songs on the band's full-length seemed to go about songwriting by placing a mid-paced section, then speeding up to a ludicrous tempo and creating a massive noise wall before coming back down temporarily for a slam, repeating the process as many times as needed to make a song that sort of made sense. The songs on this self-titled EP are a lot more controlled; they speed up and slow down at logical points, and rarely ever throw self-restraint out the window in order to create a big chunk of dissonance. The influence in the songs also feels a bit more varied - whereas Suffocated and Embalmed's songwriting was basically restricted to slams and the aforementioned chaotic blasts, this EP takes influences from a rather wide range of genres, borrowing from deathcore the breakdowns and blast beats with more snares than cymbals, along with high-tempo riffs that are equal parts modern tech-death, grindcore, and mathcore. There's maybe one actual slam to be found on this release - not that that's a bad thing, but it needs to be said that this is basically a more BDM-ish take on an early deathcore band like Despised Icon or The Red Chord, rather than a primarily BDM album. The main element of the music that could be placed within the brutal death metal spectrum are the vocals, which are probably what's changed the least from Suffocated and Embalmed - they're still an airy gurgle like they were on the full-length. The only differences of note between the two is that the amount of pig squeals has significantly decreased, and that they're a fair bit further back in the production job (both changes are slightly disappointing in my eyes), but they've essentially remained the same, which is good.

My main beef with this EP is the production job in that it really isn't as trashy and exotic anymore. Hell, I feel like I could listen to Fall Out Boy songs with the style of production on Suffocated and Embalmed and my interest would be piqued. Having acquired what is essentially a "normal" production job, Pencil Lead Syringe's music has to rely more on exactly how their riffs and compositions sound together. A few of the riffs sound too much like "fun", lighthearted deathcore/grind for my tastes, but the band can obviously still get the fuck down to business when they want to, as evidenced with the song "I Do Believe We're Naked". While there are a few riffs of questionable quality on the EP as a whole, this song is pretty damn solid throughout its length: - practically all the riffs are great, the song paces itself well, and it knows exactly where to place its breakdowns (which are pretty great throughout the album's length, I might add). Aside from that track, the metal songs are all pretty good but nothing to write home about - I'm not a particularly big fan of early deathcore so it stands to reason that I'm not wholly amazed by this stuff. In typical PLS fashion of mixing things up, there are a couple non-metal songs as well: "Staring into Oblivion" is some sort of electronic music (shit, bro, I'm a BDM fan, I can't tell you the difference between trance and techno or whatever) with a very calming, ethereal atmosphere, and it works quite well for what it is (electronica made by people who usually spend their time BREEing and slamming instead of making beats from Fruity Loops), but I'm not a huge fan of the drum machine the band used for this track, with its fuzzy, rather mechanical samples. "Lost in a Decaying Structure" is an acoustic guitar track which sounds like some sort of post-rock, and while I think it starts to drag a bit at five minutes long, it's pretty good and works as a denouement to the EP (if not one that doesn't really logically follow from the band's current sound at all).

I'm not particularly happy with Pencil Lead Syringe's changed sound, but it works pretty well for what it is. If you have an altar in your basement devoted to Fused Together in Revolving Doors then you're probably going to love this, and I suppose most brutal death metal fans will get a fair kick out of it too, but I can't say I enjoy this as much as I'd like to. Perhaps if I wasn't aware of what an astoundingly great band these guys were way back when, things would be different.