"Pharmakon" unfolds gracefully amid drones, subtle percussion, sinewy sitar and an obscure, vaguely religious chant, and it's not until about the 12-minute mark that the first distorted guitar rises to prominence. This changes the course and focus gradually, but about two minutes later, the sitar drops out, there's a fade and a thick riff takes hold complemented by drums and other percussion -- cymbals, bowls -- and "Pharmakon" takes on a surprising lurch, like a heavier early Earth or something deep in the recesses of shabda pharmakon pharmakosQueen Elephantine's subconscious. A march is underway, and the track shifts patiently, always patiently, toward an experimentalist's apex that seems to boil over just as it tops out, devolving quickly into fading noise. Of the two, "Pharmakos" is the more... grounded? I'm not sure if that's the right word, because it's all pretty earthy. Either way, a low-end drone opens the first two minutes and rises backed by deep-mixed swirling echo vocals and a sense of foreboding. The volume swell continues and gains a rhythm almost deceptively, the ritual happening before the listener's ears, and right at the moment where this wash of drone turns abrasive, Shabda add vicious one-off crashes. One after another. A plod. A lumber. If a riff could be a temple -- and I think we all know it can -- then "Pharmakos" constructs a pyramid out of these crashes, this nodding repetition. Vocals arrive, chants and incantations either in conversation with each other or not, and it becomes clear that this grueling pilgrimage is the course to be held for the duration. Gone are the pastoral sitarisms of "Pharmakon," and arrived is a consuming, unsettling swell in their places. A lead is added to the charge as the 15-minute mark of "Pharmakos" is passed, and it becomes one more layer of an engrossing, massive wall of noise that cuts out in minute 19 but keeps the same rhythm in long-fading percussion, a shaker maybe and a bowl of some sort, the shaker being the last noise, ending cold at about 20:20.