Pharaoh Overlord's Circle is bound to annul all expectations you ever held for these once avant-stoners. What's clear is that Circle marks the fusion of Pharaoh Overlord with the namesake of this album. Photo Resizer Full Version there.

Out Of Darkness is the 2011 album by Finnish experimental rock group Pharaoh Overlord. It was released by Ektro Records and is their 8th full length.

It is a wild card you foresaw. Their no-nonsense self-referentiality, oddly enough, inverses the paradox of the red queen: with the building blocks standing still, the friction with the ever-accelerating external realities gives the impression of expanding horizons in the standstill of tonal landscapes of the body of music that is Pharaoh Overlord's Circle. Synthesizers float like nitrous oxide above the serene pastures of laid-back grooves. This is epic synth pop that would vaporize any pulse or mundane logic into the stream of thin air of upper atmosphere. On Circle, Pharaoh Overlord stand among their bling-blinded subjects as a modestly-clad emperor proud of the newly-discovered self-realization by means of merging with their idols and contestants (that is, Circle) into one abstract entity of sonic flesh. There is no sobriety like loss of identity.

This is the Aquarius records review 'To begin with, there's already something special about bands from New Zealand, whether they're making eccentric indie pop or droned-out experimental noise, we like ourselves a lot of NZ music! So this band Evil Ocean, from Auckland, already has that going for them.

But then add in the fact that they're flat-out obsessed with music from another of our favorite locales, Finland, specifically what our friends in Circle like to call NWOFHM, and what do you get? A really, really awesome and unclassifiable album indeed. Krauty confusional garagey distorted DIY doom metal new wave soundtrack music? Maybe we can call it NWONZHM?? Apart from several interludes of eerie, abstract weirdness, the disc mostly consists of some fairly blown-out, rockin' songs, which are ALSO weird as all heck though. These tracks are full of thick fuzz guitar, churning riffage riding the rinky-dink ticky-tock of the manic, machine-sounding percussion.

Other ingredients include dramatic female vocals and gnarlier, sneering male vox (rising into a falsetto at times), plenty of effects and sci-fi synth sounds everywhere, tons o' fuzz (we mentioned that already), spooky suspenseful bits, metallic gallop, industrial clank, seasick keyboards, and more. There's ritualistic stuff that sounds like Sylvester Anfang, propulsive parts a la Circle, and heads-down Hawkwindy hypno-rock. The mood can get genuinely intense and disturbing, yet Evil Oceans also obviously display a bizarre, even nerdy sense of humor, heck there's a track here called 'Rise Of The Administration Daleks', complete with hysterical Dalek voices.