Debut full-length album from Maltese outfit, Pyramid Suns, is impressive, modern, and thoughtful. It shows great promise for future works.

It is a pleasure to review, finally, a Maltese band. The two previous releases by Pyramid Suns are available on Bandcamp at https://pyramidsuns.bandcamp.com/music with their eponymous EP released in 2016, and single-track Incubus released in 2017. The former especially was well received, and, to these ears, had a rawness which promised much, especially the retro smoky blues infused We Only Know How to Run and the denser psych permeating Mirkwood – both are embedded below.

The band offer probably the best descriptor of music I have seen in many a year, namely “our music has a rounded kind of pointy sound”. Wonderfully cryptic and my hope was that the music on their debut full album, Reflections, matched this.

It is clear to these ears that Reflections offers a clear progression in terms of writing, performing, and certainly production. The band have continued to perform, albeit with the distraction of the Covid rules, which were particularly harsh in Malta, and have used the time wisely.

In an interview with Times of Malta last June ahead of the album release on the island, they described the album’s overarching themes as urging audiences to reflect on the self and on the way our society works. What am I doing right or wrong? How can I be better? What can I do to impact the society we live in given my position?

The Desert commences the album, and immediately noticeable are the clever patterns created by new drummer, Luke Briffa behind the guitar chords. The overwhelming sense of this track is its modernity, in its chorus a post rock anthem to independence of thought and action, and the need to focus on today. The final minute brings with it an impressive guitar solo by Kyle Fenech.

Dust is up next and opens with some powerful riffs. Briffa and bassist Keith Fenech keep matters chugging along nicely. When Joel Baldacchino enters proceedings with his vocals, the mood turns very thoughtful and introspective. Mid-Section, we get a wonderfully haunting guitar riff above the still rather mighty rhythm section. When the vocal mood returns, this then segues into quite the loveliest guitar riff playing us out.

Looking for the Light clocks in at over six minutes long. The opening passage is pretty moody, and the blues infusion, which you can listen to below, is a very clear step up from the opening EP track you heard above. Lyrically, the band ask the questions thoughtful people ask themselves every day, namely where precisely we stand in all of this, with the subject drowning in a world of pain, and the music develops into a questing, searching, and soulful refrain, with very strong progressive rock sensibilities. Although this is my first 2023 release review, this track, I know, will remain a highlight of the year

Instinctive Lust follows – I remember that! It opens with some more very clever pulsing bass and guitar work before the vocals and drums join the fray with an explosion of noise. Desire, hurt, love, all those emotions which make us what we are.

An instrumental, Groove Academy opens with some mighty fine bass grooves, soulful and bright with the lead guitar increasing in intensity. Once the first heavy interlude a minute in burns itself out, the main passage is a long, impressive jam with that bass especially and joyfully prominent, before the closing passage reasserts a crunchingly heavy sound.

Cold Wind, which opens with the sound of the title washing in your ears, is next, with a clever observation how, at our core, we really are only a bunch of advanced monkeys in the zoo, a thought Douglas Adams famously brought to the fore for my generation in Hitchhikers Guide. This is dystopia wrought large and is a piece of music that grows on the listener with repeated spins.

Interlude is a short instrumental featuring some very nice effects accompanying the guitar and bass chords and is a sound I would like the band to develop, because it is very good.

The Fool is the penultimate track, and there are clear Americana influences. There is a dual personality between the spoken, almost growling, words and sung vocals with fools questioning themselves about what they stand for, looking inward as a hermit would, with parallel figures searching for the truth. The final minute turns the musical theme abruptly on its head with a heavy, and rather disturbing, psych burst.

The album closes with its longest track, Violet at just short of eight minutes long. It starts with a didgeridoo accompanying the guitar chords. Yep, that famous Australian long pipe on an album played by four Maltese lads. This group are nothing if not inventive, and it is this big range of influences and themes which makes this album so enjoyable. The instrument adds an undercurrent of impending doom to the dark chords being played by the lead guitar and rhythm section. This mood is not improved by the opening lyrics talking of the heart being a rotten corpse ready for eternity and the cruel world we live in, before it develops into what I interpret as dark feelings brought about by loss of the heart variety. Musically, this track is at its core progressive metal, and is very well performed.

Musically, this album is never anything less than excellent. Reflections is the sound and attitude of a band progressing, and I expect some extremely special things from them moving forward. The album is available on all streaming platforms, including on the record label Kewn Records Bandcamp page https://kewnrecords.bandcamp.com/