PYRAMIDO is a five-piece sludge/post-metal band from Malmö, Sweden. They've been active since 2006 and have released five full length records along with numerous split singles. Their most recent effort, "Fem", was released on September 27th and has a total of six tracks.

The album opens with two tracks that bleed into each other creating basically one long song. The tracks in question, "Född Till Att Springa" and "Levande Döda", offer over ten minutes combined of melancholic despair - a mood that sets the tone perfectly for the majority of this 34-minutes long record. The tracks are fine but not greatly memorable. The bass appears to be absent or buried in the mix for the majority of the songs with the guitars eclipsing the sound.

The follow up track, "Utvägen", is the debut single for the record but I found it to be quite a bore to sit through. The riffs are repetitive to say the least with the bass still absent. The song length didn't help matters much clocking in at over seven minutes, which is quite unusual for a lead single to be the longest song on the record. With a little over a minute left on the track, the guitar tone shifted slightly, giving an illusion that something interesting may happen but the song backs out and almost immediately falls back into the same repetition of the previous six minutes. Thus far, the record sounds as if it's desperately trying to be a NEUROSIS record but it comes up short repeatedly. The vocalist, Ronnie Kallback, is shockingly similar in tone to that of Scott Kelly.

The fourth track, "Fänrik Källbacks Sägner", shakes up the record quite nicely by starting off with some groovy bass textures and adding in a variation in guitar tone but it's the sixth track that stands out as the album's best. "Fem", the album's title track, starts off with a spooky, airy guitar riff coupled with some eerie, gushing wind sound effects subtly layered in that would feel at home on an ULVER or PANOPTICON record. The song comes alive at nearly the two-minute mark where the rest of the band falls into groove and lets the tension build on this beautifully crafted atmospheric black metal song. The song is about 75% instrumental with the vocals appearing at the last minute for a very brief amount of time. The track is the highlight of the record and unfortunately feels a bit out of place when compared to the rest of the album.

Overall, the record feels very safe. It's at its peak when it gets experimental. While the record is designed as a whole, to be a sludgy, Post-Metal effort, the outlier final track is reason enough to give it a spin. This band has an atmospheric Black Metal record in them, and I truly hope they explore that avenue in the future.