If you didn’t already know our blatant bias towards French experimental metal band Pryapisme, now is the time to witness it. The reason is that the band’s newest work, Futurologie EP, has just come out, and, as you would expect from a totally biased reviewer, it’s fucking incredibly awesome! Now let’s dig a little deeper to see why, and try to convert you into our Church of Pryapismology.

First of all the band has made it clear from the very beginning that they would be including a lot of humour into their instrumental mayhem. With an imagery based on cats, among other things, and a lot of plays on words (in French) and absurdly lengthy song names, the most stupidly long one being La Notion De Chiralité De Spin Et D’Oscillation De Saveur Des Particules Supersymétriques Définissant Un Champs Scalaire Lors D’Une Transition De Conifold En Cosmologie Branaire Dans Un Modèle Ekpyrotique, which roughly translates to “The Notion of Spin Chirality and Savour Oscillation of Supersymmetric Particles Defining A Scalar Field During a Conifold Transition in Branar Cosmology in an Ekpyrotic Model”. They also include different vocal excerpts in their songs, either taken from movies, or made on purpose. Pryapisme is, sadly, one of the few artists that can pull off humour in metal and create something that is funny while being good on a music standpoint.

The part that always gets me on Petit Traité de Futurologie sur L’Homo cretinus trampolinis (et son Annexe sur les Nageoires Caudales) (yes, that’s the “title track”) is an excerpt of a dialogue between the rent collector and the woman who has to pay the rent, but cannot. It’s just the best 5 seconds of humour in metal ever; it’s so absurd!

On the music side, there is unbelievable variety, and undoubted musical mastery. From exotic, almost world-sounding, music with various acoustic instruments of different origins, creating some kind of weird musical sphere where Eastern and Western traditional instruments play together – very unique indeed – to other, almost deathgrind-ish passages with heavy blast beats and loads of electronic instruments on top, and the transition between those two passages can be really short, but well-done and nothing sounds out of place. The title track, which I will not write a second time here, lasts more than 22 minute, and it’s 22 minutes of deeply thought-out musical jerkery, separated into eleven parts, and with the added bonus of a complete orchestral version of the song which is also equally good.

Pryapisme has trained us to expect nothing less than masterpieces from them, and they keep on delivering, and not disappointing us. And that’s where our huge bias towards that band comes from. They just kill it, every time!

Go on and grab yourself something that will fuck with your brain, and that is completely licit and non-destructive.

Even though January’s not even behind us yet, Futurologie EP is certain to find its way on our best of the year list! Don’t wait until then!