Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Pyogenesis: Teenage awkwardness in musical form


The name of this band was brought up by one of our readers a couple of weeks ago. Upon reading it, I was instantly transported to another time (1992)...a time when my brother would spend entire weekends reading and writing letters with tape traders from places like Romania, Ecuador and Turkey. Back then, our mailbox was consistently packed with demos from noise, grind and death metal bands from all over the world, most of them completely awful. It's within that context that I remember the name Pyogenesis, and as such I quickly wondered what had happened to them since. Through the magic of the interweb, my thirst for knowledge was quickly quenched via the video below. Listen to the music and be amazed a this group of germans who never met a style of music they didn't like. Much like the awful buffet restaurants that have pizza, and pasta, and chinese food, and ice cream, and Indian food, and sushi...the mix is interesting but odd at the same time. Think about the awkward teenager in your high school (perhaps it was you) who bounced around from subculture to subculture. That teenager is Pyogenesis. As the music starts to take a decidedly pop-punk twist, remind yourself that these guys were metal enough to have been on Osmose Productions, and some of the members were in Gut. With an impecable metal resume like that (I'm kinda' joking, in case you can't tell) their change in musical direction is even more amusing. Notice that this clip only features their evolution until 2002...by now they're probably composing rock operas, and "dropping" mix tapes that feature Lil' Wayne.






Oh, and who could forget their semi-techno cover of Toto's "Africa"?

36 comments:

  1. dear lucho, i give you one word and i let you finish your research properly. LIQUIDO.

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  2. I listened to some of their pre-alternative stuff, it was melodic death metal with balls (definitely NOT Archenemy), but I lost them with that sweet x something album... then twinaleblood followed, and it was even worse. At that time, I also lost Entombed, Morgoth, Carcass, Death, Napalm Death. Hard times.

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  3. oh my god, i used to own one of their earlier cd's..this was really crap music..weird..yes..but also CRAP! Crap musicians

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  4. Is it the same band whose bass player had no right hand, and used a system that clipped a pick to his wrist?

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  5. there was a big rumor circulating that Pyo changed their sound for "unpop" because their label (nuclear blast i think) put lots of pressure on them to sound like black metal, because it was 1997. So they sounded extra gay just to piss them off.

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  6. Dude, you didn't just knock GUT, did you?!?!?! Not cool bro!

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  7. Yup, Roman their bassplayer played with a pick clipped to his wrist...

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  8. I loved their mini-lp when it came out...on Osmose if i remember correctly...I worn out the LP listening to it.Right after they started to suck ass

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  9. So they sounded extra gay just to piss them off.

    They started sounding "gay" as early as Twinaleblood. Unpop was just a natural progression towards aggravated suckage, which only continued later on, culminating in the mind-boggling Liquido (as mentioned earlier). Someone must've been really hard-pressed for pussy.

    The video is as baffling as it is amazing, though.

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  10. ...oh, it was also the time when the level of suckage of Sepultura increased dramatically (between Chaos BCAD and Roofs). Then Slayer recorded two pieces of crap (DI and their punk record, a KK idea indeed), Pantera and Machinehead took over...horrible, horrible times...please write another post about unexpected musical changes!

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  11. Pyogenesis rule. Yeah, their punk stuff sucks, but their first demos, when they were just plain death metal, were good (though kind of average), and when they became a more doom oriented metal band they got even better. As someone that wrote in doom-metal.com, maybe they are the only happy doom metal band. Listen to their demo "Ignis Creatio" from 1993. That demo is excellent. Finally, the album Sweet-X-Rates Nothings and the Ep "Waves of Erostia" are very good, not as good as the demo Ignis Creatio, but you can find some really sweet songs in there, and very, very catchy. Well, and I have to mention that the song Loves Nation Sugarhead could be pretty gay, but I really like it. Listen to it and try to tell me it didn't stick in your head for a whole day. Good to see a post about Pyogenesis, though it doesn't say anything good about the band...

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  12. Those were hard times Frank. I'd add Dismember as well. I was very disappointed when Massive Killing Capacity came out. Middle pace, boring death metal. Some songs are ok, but not even close to what they had recorded until then. But at least Dismember kept recording death metal albums, and their last albums are very good in my opinion. Maybe if you listen to the album nowadays, you'd say it's good, because there are so many crappy bands around (brutal death and deathcore, I'm looking at you), but in 1995, that was boring.

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  13. i agree their real early stuff was cool. i only recall a handful of songs. that was long ago, when i was sproutin' my first pubes..

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  14. "Massive killing capacity" was a huge letdown, especially after a classic like "Indecent..." (which was and still is overlooked).
    They played safe, but failed anyway.
    I don't know what were death metal bands thinking about in those years...some became "alternative", others started playing wank prog metal...really dark times, Misfits...

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  15. I was one of the suckers who back in the day bought Unpop based on misleading reviews. It was crap. It was shit. It was crappy shit. Horrible underproduced pop punk. The album included stupid songs wuith names like "Cheapo Speakers", "Alternative Girl" and "Love Nation Sugarhead". It currently sells for like $2 at half.com if anyone is interested...

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  16. Really? No one has yet commented on the Hatebreed ad on the top of the articles? I don't care if they were going to get you guys blowjobs by scene-chicks--there has to be some kind of line in the sand.

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  17. seems like a chill bro...

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  18. horrible, horrible times...please write another post about unexpected musical changes!

    It's in the works!

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  19. I don't care if they were going to get you guys blowjobs by scene-chicks--there has to be some kind of line in the sand.

    Like it says, I fully expect that we will get absolutely nothing for running that ad (ie, will get ripped off), but I love Hatebreed so it's OK.

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  20. dude, i love how after 2:21 you 'mashed up' nofx, pennywise, and bad religion and tried to pass it off as pyogenesis! brilliant! (and i think you might have put some queensryche in there for good measure...)

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  21. I absolutely love Pyogenesis, especially their first demo, the Sacrificious Profanity single, and the Ignis Creatio mini-LP. I even own their entire discography, but as Frank said, they turned into rubbish on Sweet X-Rated Nothings. I listen to the later stuff, but it's only a guilty pleasure like Lady GaGa or Katy Perry -- but far more embarrassing.

    While Pyogenesis' change from doom death to shitty Euro pop-punk was drastic, it's no where near as mind-blowing as Xysma's "evolution". They started off as a grindcore band and eventually became a cock-rock band with Glen Danzig vocals. How is that even possible?

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  22. possibly innocent bystanderOctober 8, 2009 at 3:22 PM

    Frank, Misfits
    I hear you... that was the time of my first mid-life crisis, when all the good bands turned to utter suckdom - and I wasn´t even 20 yet, harhar. Demolition Hamemr, another sad case - to be fair, though, they never wanted to release "Time machine" as a DH albumbut the label...
    Nothing wrong with Lady Gaga compared to that gay shite... ah wait, no, "gay" hints at the presence of balls while it is just some utterly dickless crap.
    Xysma, hm... yeah but the second album was cool in a way, Cock Rock with blast beats has its charme. ;)

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  23. PIB, are you referring to First and Magical or Lotto? Lotto is alright, but I fucking love First and Magical. Xysma's grindcore period is classic, but in my opinion, they were the only band who were able to play death 'n roll and make it sound interesting.

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  24. "Like it says, I fully expect that we will get absolutely nothing for running that ad (ie, will get ripped off), but I love Hatebreed so it's OK."

    Oh, ok. I didn't stop to think that anyone actually really liked Hatebreed. As a former death metal enthusiast, you probably know that they take the best riffs from that genre, rip them off and stick hardcore vocals over it. The end result is high testosterone music for the modern urban/suburban "thug."

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  25. i have to admit, "symbol of disgrace" was one of the better songs on "Death is just the beginning volume 3". brings me back to 1995 (._.) memorieessss...

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  26. a question Lucho, why do you post a link to the lameness that is Lastfm which only gives you 30 seconds of play instead of the full version available on You Tube??

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  27. possibly innocent bystanderOctober 9, 2009 at 4:32 PM

    Hey Zachary,

    yeah I meant "First and Magical", it is too cool to be true, "Lotto" on the other hand isn´t so great.
    But please don´t tell me you have never listened to "Yeah"! :O

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  28. PIB, Above the Mind of Morbidity, Fata Morgana, Yeah, and First & Magical are all mandatory. Xysma is classic and inconceivably underrated.

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  29. chorizophrenia:

    because i am lazy. i've never used or looked at lastfm before, so i didn't know it was lame.

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  30. So I checked out Xysma thanks to the comments to this post, I ended up picking up the double CD with Yeah, First & Magical, the first 2 EPs and the demo on it. Thanks, it rules.

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  31. Yeah, personally I consider Xysma's grindcore beginnings as the stuff of autistic children. It sucked. Lotto is a different beast though. Maybe they should have changed their moniker as sounds like a totally bizarre band comprised of weirdos and led by that moron that pretended to be homeless from that band Life Sex and Death. Good record. Didn't care to listen to any of their other records though.

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  32. hahaha, the infamous "first two demos only, after they're sellouts" syndrome. XYSMA was cool back in the daze. XYSMA is still cool ! You should talk about CARCASS starting with pus bubbling/putrefying corpse and ending up telling you to vote ! I luv them though.

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  33. I've heard that they have a new band, in the poppy punk vein, named PANGEA. I think that PYOGENESIS is over... I really like their OLD STUFF... 'till 1994... There are ex-members player in the holy GUT and in the pathetic LIQUIDO.

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  34. Pangäa was a side project of Flo in the early 90ies. He also was involved in a band called ORISON.

    The base player with one hand - his name is Roman does this now:
    http://www.myspace.com/satyrian
    http://www.myspace.com/dreamside

    Two ex-members did this:
    http://www.myspace.com/liquido

    And I also heard their actual base player changed genders...

    Good old days...

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  35. You are thanks for sharing useful post .

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  36. Nice article as well as whole site.Thanks for sharing.

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