Kerretta – Pirohia LP

When you want a gentle feather to caress your tired eardrums, before hammering them flat with the force of a rhinoceros, Pirohia by Kerretta is your album. Like an Acme anvil tumbling in slow-motion from a cliff and landing with a thud on your unwary coyote head, the third unnerving album from the cunning Auckland trio will knock you blind. As tweeting cartoon birds circle your smarting brain, a lightbulb will flash in your subconscious. Ice-sparkling tunes will restore your mind to order like a frigid mountain stream. There is only one thing left to do: edge up the volume and start again. Let the fuzzy force of the unexpected spark your neurons back to life.

Described as the “the thinking metaller’s rock band”, Kerretta was spawned from the dark and forbidding streets of Kingsland, New Zealand. Their debut album Vilayer was one of the highlights of 2009, gaining praise and glory from fans and critics alike across the globe. In New Zealand it was nominated for the inaugural Taite Music Prize, an honour similar to being nominated for a Mercury prize in the UK. Giving a cold shoulder, stony eyed glare and a quiet [expletive deleted] hiss under their collective breath at the outmoded idea that all bands need lead vocalists, Kerretta revel in their lack thereof and pursue, with steadfast glee, the ins and the outs, the ups and the downs of a purely sonic narrative. A narrative that is heavy and dark, twisted with shards of beauty and danger all sitting securely on top of a churning slow burn groove. On one track only does the trio relent, and then in an unconventional fashion. The eerie and powerful „Kawea Tātou Ki Ngā Hiwi“ features vocals in Te Reo Maori fashioned along the ancient sunbleached bones of a traditional Maori waiata (song).

Pirohia was mastered at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, London.