It took a lot reinvention to finish up at SpiritWorld’s superb destruction. DEATHWESTERN, the Las Vegas metallic hardcore band’s preposterously superior new album, presents a totally fashioned aesthetic — an entire fleshed-out universe of pulpy sonic violence impressed by Westerns, horror, outlaw nation, the occult, and the heavy steel classics of the late twentieth century. The guitars whinny like steeds and lock into galloping thrash riffs. Band mastermind Stu Folsom blurs the road between guttural struggle cries and anguished howls, portraying a doomed desert lowlife who finds new function as an instrument of bloody divine vengeance. The world-building expands past the music into exceptionally gnarly music movies, a companion brief story assortment by Folsom additionally dropping Friday, and stay exhibits that see the band donning Western fits and cowboy hats.
This obscenely enjoyable and engaging challenge didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s extra just like the grand end result of a inventive imaginative and prescient that has been evolving for years. When Justin “Stu” Brundy began the metalcore act Folsom twenty years in the past, the band identify betrayed his curiosity in nation music. In 2017, Brundy — who was by then going by Stu Folsom — launched SpiritWorld to indulge his love of cowpunk, name-checking X, Dwight Yoakam, and Lucero in interviews and even releasing a track referred to as “Zevon Forever.” (He printed up SpiritWorld hoodies emblazoned with the identical phrase.) Those early SpiritWorld recordings had been an unusually potent model of the overdone punk-goes-country pivot, matching twangy Telecasters with blunt-force barking to invigorating impact. It was a sound Folsom would quickly discard, but it surely was a needed transitional part.
When debut album Pagan Rhythms emerged final yr, SpiritWorld had undergone a wild metamorphosis. The Old West roots remained, however the cowpunk factor was over. This was now a full-fledged steel band, punishingly heavy and giddily dedicated to its storyline about Satan coming to Earth to destroy humanity. (Key title: “Armageddon Honkytonk & Saloon.”) Each observe barreled forward like a Fury Road truck stuffed with burly demonic cowboys kicking up clouds of mud on their approach to demolish the following city over. Folsom’s orc-like bellows and rallying cries had been vivid of their depiction of a cursed world overrun by hell. It was a holy-shit triumph of a file, each a press release of function and proof of idea. And with their second album, SpiritWorld have topped it.
DEATHWESTERN begins, naturally, with Ennio Morricone-style Spaghetti Western scene-setting. One sampled voice asks, “Are you anti-Christ, or are you for Christ? Those are your only options.” Another exclaims, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s find a saloon!” With that, we’re whisked away into the pummeling, screaming brutality of the title observe. Over chugging riffage Folsom describes as “100% intentional White Zombie worship” — it jogs my memory extra of Pantera due to all these pinch harmonics — Folsom howls, “I heard the preacher say/ Our savior died to absolve our sins/ But a wretch like me don’t need a cross, just the end of a rope!” Further character growth follows on “Relic Of Damnation,” which toggles between “For Whom The Bell Tolls” homage and relentless rapid-fire chug: “I could have swore I saw the Devil on a sawdust floor/ In a honky tonk in North Texas/ But maybe it was just the booze/ Or maybe all the Mescaline!”
As a author, Folsom is brilliantly dedicated to his shtick. As heard on “The Heretic Butcher,” his character sketches are concise and evocative: “I by no means felt alive/ ‘Til the day I found/ My hands around the throat/ Of a heretic rejecting the light!” But before you can grasp his conceptual genius, what’s certain to seize you first is the music itself. Like a lot of the steel they’re channeling right here, SpiritWorld are monumentally heavy but far too agile and dynamic to get caught within the muck. Just as crucially, Folsom understands how yelling can perform as a hook. This is doubly obvious on the quickie deep reduce “Crucified Heathen Scum,” which inserts in a number of chorus-worthy segments regardless of operating lower than two minutes. “His everlasting light shines down on me!” Folsom hollers midway by, extending the phrase “light” till you are feeling it burn. In the tip, he lets the phrase “crucified” cling within the air the identical method till his bandmates puncture the stress with a gang-chanted “heathen scum!”
Like Pagan Rhythms earlier than it, DEATHWESTERN is an idea album, with each musical and thematic continuity throughout its tracklist. Sometimes it feels just like the file just isn’t constructed from particular person songs a lot as actions inside a gory symphony that owes as a lot to Slayer as Cormac McCarthy. Lots of people had a hand in its creation — longtime producer Sam Pura, whose identify finds its method into “Purafied In Violence”; a crew of bandmates together with Folsom’s brother Nick Brundy; visitor shredding from a solid of guitarists for acts starting from Black Dahlia Murder to Kim Petras(!); even an look by Dwid Hellion of kindred spirits Integrity on a track referred to as “Moonlit Torture & Genital Mutilation”(!!) — but its strengths and quirks all movement from Folsom’s enraptured experience. This man spent one thing like 20 years looking for the truest manifestation of his passions. He’s discovered it. With DEATHWESTERN, we now get to step inside Folsom’s thoughts and behold his singular twisted imaginative and prescient. We simply may not depart with all our limbs.
DEATHWESTERN is out 11/25 on Century Media.
Other albums of observe out this week:
• Fievel Is Glauque’s Flaming Swords
• Stormzy’s This Is What I Mean
• Rabit’s What Dreams May Come
• Elder’s Innate Passage
• Nightshift’s Made Of The Earth
• Waajeed’s Memoirs Of Hi-Tech Jazz
• Marcus Paquin’s Our Love
• High Command’s Eclipse Of The Dual Moons
• Stargaze’s ONE
• Tchornobog and Abyssal’s cut up LP
• Daniel Vangarde’s The Vaults Of Zagora Records Mastermind (1971-1984), a comp of Daft Punk member Thomas Bangalter’s father’s music
• David Bowie’s DAVID BOWIE DIVINE SYMMETRY field set
• The Cure’s Wish thirtieth Anniversary Deluxe Edition
• The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots: twentieth Anniversary Deluxe Edition
• Celtic Frost’s Danse Macabre field set
• Tom Petty’s Live At The Fillmore
• David Crosby’s David Crosby & The Lighthouse Band Live At The Capitol Theatre
• Elvis Costello’s The Boy Named If (Alive At Memphis Magnetic)
• Trey Anastasio’s The Beacon Jams
• Ride frontman Andy Bell’s Untitled Film Stills covers EP
• Devo member Gerald V. Casale’s The Invisible Man EP