Reviews
Sons of Perdition Offer Up Hymns for the World-Weary
Or maybe canticles for the cursed?
Went to see the doc about this crushing ennui I’ve been feeling. Turns out I’m spiritually dead. No cure for it. Great. Just my luck.
Then I learnt of a musical combo, Sons of Perdition, in that “Gothic Americana” vein over which I’ve been so agog as of late. Endorsed by no less a personage than Lonesome Wyatt himself of Those Poor Bastards ignominy. So I secured myself a copy of their second full-length release, Psalms for the Spiritually Dead. This could be the ticket, I reckoned.
I got this album scant days after its release, but I’ve held on to this review for well over a year because I just didn’t feel I could do it one whit of justice. This is one bleak album. And not fake-bleak in an ostentatious, obligatorily black-clad doom-rocker way. No. Sincerely and heart-wrenchingly bleak. It is not entirely humorless, but what humor lies underneath is coal black. This may be the finest album I’ve heard in years. And it really does work well as an album, in the strictest sense of the term denoting a collection of songs best listened to in a prescribed order.
Sons of Perdition seems to be largely a one-man effort led by a Mr. Zebulon Whatley with assistance from selected guest musicians (not the man’s real name, I suspect, but then again, neither is “Monkeypants” mine). I envision this as the type of music that might be played somewhere in Appalachia on someone’s rickety back porch when it’s gettin’ into the wee hours and the evening’s caterwaulin’ has got to be toned down a notch because the nearest neighbors are threatening to call the county sheriff if someone don’t knock off that dingbusted racket! It’s undoubtedly Gothic and it’s undoubtedly Americana, but it’s not of the wild and wailin’ variety so frequently employed by purveyors of the genre; rather, this is an intensely introspective and markedly restrained slow-burn. It only dawned on me after many listens that there’s very little by way of percussion to be found in the lot.
I’m a big believer in pre-judging an album by its cover art (yes, a term that is well-nigh a relic of a bygone era, I know), but it’s particularly relevant here: A cadaver, arms outstretched as though crucified, bisected neatly across the torso. In each of the upper corners, deformed babies, such as one might find floating in jars of formaldehyde on display at some dime museum or dodgy carnival sideshow. In the bottom corners, respectively, a skeletal Rev. Jim Jones and a skeletal Col. John Chivington of American Civil War and Indian Wars infamy, ensconced in flames. All of this is a telling glimpse into what's in store for the lucky listener.
It’s impossible, of course, to ignore the album’s dominant religious overtones. I’ll leave it up to the listener to decide whether this is truly kin to “Christian music” as it is commonly conceived. (Hint: Think false prophets and insufferable zealots, tent revivals, and the all-too-human evangelizers depicted in the works of authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy.) The trappings are there to convey a deeper point. There is a gospel of a sort being preached here, but it is a secular gospel of hopelessness and resignation, transience and decay, human fallibility and hypocrisy.
Some thoughts on each song:
“Psalm of Withering” – The opening track and probably my favorite. An addictive dirge with touches of old-time piano and some of the grimmest lyrics ever to grace my ears. (“Now sow those seeds in that ground / that grows so fallow and cold / You know they’ll never be found / I say they’ll only grow mold / ‘cause there ain’t gonna be no big harvest this year / I tell you, time to settle debts, it is a-drawing so near / Now taste the blood on the teeth of the only one you love.”)
“Psalm of Sand Creek” – This may be the only track I can’t listen to on constant rotation. It’s about the 1864 Sand Creek massacre of Cheyenne Indians by Col. John Chivington. Maybe I just find it too specific of a historical reference. I have no problem with songs about Evil, but for some reason I have more difficulty wrapping my head around too particular of an evil. But that’s my own quirk, and there is nothing wrong with the song per se. Musically it fits perfectly in with the rest of the album and its themes. (It’s worth noting here that Chivington was an ordained Methodist minister and missionary as well as a stalwart abolitionist...so the song is particularly appropos in conveying the notion that evil often lurks in the unlikeliest of hearts.)
“Psalm of Nod” – The closest we get to a hootenanny here; a revamp of the old spiritual “Wade in the Water” with what I must presume are contemporary lyrics (“Despair has gripped me by the balls...”). TPB’s Lonesome Wyatt makes an appearance. [Update: Zeb himself was kind enough to inform me that the correct lyric is “Despair has gripped me by the bones.” I’m appropriately chagrined, but also relieved that despair has released my nutsac from its insidious grasp.]
“Psalm of Retribution” – The perfect musical accompaniment to an Edgar Allan Poe story of your choosing. A dim cellar, the torturous chirping of crickets, “decay-withered limbs,” and “a wall where one shouldn’t be.” What more could you want?
“Psalm of Solitude” – Indeed a lonely, lonely-sounding song. Brilliant lyrics: “That moon is a Eucharist, stale and unleavened. Those stars all are maggots in the cold flesh of Heaven.”
“Psalm of Hell” – A brief, discordant instrumental interlude.
“Psalm of Woe” – A song that snuck up on me very stealthily after twenty-some-odd listens to the album. A supplicant’s plea to god for nothing save oblivion: “LORD let me die, LORD let me rot, LORD give me not another thought.”
“Psalm of Eulogy” – A journal-burning and a pre-emptive eulogy for someone who apparently is not yet deceased. With a little sleuthing, I discovered that it’s a paean to Christoph Mueller, who did the cover art. Contains the clever lines: “Angels claim thee, Christoph / And bear thee from this earth / May it suffer from thy absence / As it suffered from thy birth.” Also notable for the the inclusion of those great alliterative words so seldom used together, “reek and rot.” This one has an almost doo-wop feel to it, and I can just about picture Mr. Zebulon Whatley and friends, donning plaid jackets and Brylcreem-slicked pompadours, snapping their fingers in unison to the beat while a single spotlight shines down on them. A prize to anyone who gets this played at their prom.
“Psalm of Warmth” – I also have a hard time listening to this too often. The lyrics tell the tale of mutant albino urchins torturing and then torching a drunkard who is unlucky enough to happen upon them. Reminds me of one of the opening scenes of A Clockwork Orange, when Alex and his three droogs mercilessly pummel a besotted old beggar.
“Psalm 138” – After many listens, this has become my second-favorite track. Opens with Zeb preachin’ hellfire, which clears the way for a somber litany of all the ways one could earn eternal damnation. (“For hating and gloating and doing no good / and holding what should have been free…for the hundreds of times that you kicked those gates wide / even though you'd been handed the key…Hell gapes wide for thee.”)
“Psalm of Slumber” – Excerpts from the Guyana “death tape” immortalizing the eerie final exhortations of Reverend Jim Jones to his followers, with Ennio-Morricone-esque overdubs added. (The music group Psychic TV may have been the first to make use of the Jonestown recordings, but they have been mined to greater extent since then.) Literally the soundtrack to a massacre. Now, I confess to a morbid fascination with the Peoples Temple cult—yet I don’t consider this some sort of exploitative entertainment, but rather a moving reminder of the enormous destructive power that misplaced religious fervor can wreak. As the screams of the dying grow louder, Jones’ voice over the loudspeaker becomes increasingly frantic: “Adults! Adults! Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense! I call on you to quit exciting your children when all they’re doing is going to a quiet rest.” Within minutes, some 900 people will be dead. “All I did was not fall into the hands of the enemy,” Jones proclaims before fade-out. “Hurry, my children.” Chilling.
Here’s the official video for “Psalm of Withering,” animated by Bo Mathorne:
Posted by Todd Monkeypants on 10/14 • (0) Comments • Permalink
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