On this four-song Serpent Records split release, Massachusetts doomers Black Pyramid contend with Morehead, Kentucky duo Old One and show us as listeners two of the major developments in American doom over the last decade or so. Where the trio Black Pyramid go grand, constantly vying for the most epic riff, progression, sustained note, whatever, Old One opt for a grittier, nastier, sludgier sound that somehow holds on to a sense of ritualism without falling prey to ‘70s posturing or mere Electric Wizardry.

Black Pyramid are first, killing the Sagittarius all over their two tracks, “Illumination” and “Warswine.” “Illumination” makes for a quick 15 minutes, but shows marked sonic development from the band’s self-titled MeteorCity debut last year. The first six minutes or so rely on essentially the same riff, but the groove of the song and playing and singing of guitarist Andy “Dinger” Beresky is such that you lose yourself rather than lose interest. Black Pyramid’s rhythm section proves to be among the meatiest in the scene today, with bassist Gein’s rumblings providing a solid foundation for Beresky and the deft cymbal work of drummer Clay Neely.

There aren’t many structural differences between “Illumination” and the battle-ready “Warswine,” which is some seven minutes shorter at 7:57, but what Black Pyramid are showing with the track is their ability to apply more than one formula to their sound. Doubtless we’ll see more of this with their next release, whatever and whenever that might be, but what’s essential to understand until then is that Beresky, Gein and Neely are growing as players and as a unit. I was too busy thinking of Black Pyramid as a kickass album to think of it as a display of potential, but in the context of the years to come, that might have to be how it’s interpreted.

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Exclusive to the audiObelisk is this epic new track from Massachusetts metallers of stone, Black Pyramid. Culled from their forthcoming split with Kentucky duo Old One, “Illumination” stretches over 15 minutes in length and sees the trio — Andy Beresky (guitar), Gein (bass) and Clay Neely (drums) — push their mastery of the riffing arts into new territory from what was previously heard on their 2009 self-titled.

Black Pyramid‘s portion, rounded out by the track “Warswine,” was mixed by engineer Justin Pizzoferratu, and both Black Pyramid and Old One‘s tracks were mastered by Matt Washburn (Mastodon, Starchild). The Black Pyramid/Old One split is due out shortly on Serpent Records. Listen to “Illumination” here:

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While you listen, Andy Beresky fills us in on the goings on with the track:

The way the song relates to the album material is simple: we had finished with the album, and that freed us up to experiment and broaden our horizons a bit with our splits and sevens, so that’s what we decided to do. With the Old One split, we initially decided to go with the traditional “long song” approach, and have one extended track. Then the problem became writing it. “Warswine,” which became the second track on the split, was actually written first, even though it wasn’t originally meant for the split. It just took me a long time to approach writing a song that long, to figure out where to start. Eventually I just sat down and figured I’d have to start somewhere, and if I came up with a good beginning theme, then I could build off of that, and the song would just write itself. Well, that’s pretty much what ended up happening, but when I stretched it out to 20 minutes or so, I realized that about five minutes of it really was unnecessary and dragged it out too much, so we cut that and just went with the bare bones. Originally I had written a more ambient section between the tremolo picked section and the psychedelic Floydian part with the solo, but it just wasn’t needed, so we cut it, and that allowed us to record and use “Warswine” for the split also.

Lyrically, I’m not really going to get into what “Illumination” is about, but it’s kind of like a state of the union address, there are a lot of veiled references as to what I see going on at the time, take that for what you may. If you think a certain passage or phrase means a certain thing, then hey, chances are that it does. We want people to enjoy it for what it is: a longer song that we put a lot of thought and time into, rather than nitpick what the details of the song really mean. We like to think that the song as a whole tells its own story, and has its own unique perspective.