O'Death
Broken Hymns, Limbs And Skin

The knife is placed on the skin of the throat. It wants to plunge itself, like possessed of its own will, all the way to the handle; bone, brass, steel, and the engraving "Feldmann" getting soaked in blood. When the low tide crashes tenaciously on the shore of existence, nothing can be spared. Stabbing one's throat in a state of mad excitement because a song tells you to might seem grotesque; and indeed it is.

So I decide that, damn, maybe "Low Tide" doesn't want me to open a new orifice on my neck. And then there's nothing left to do but sink my teeth into the cork of a wine bottle and let go, in a late May sunset, into an obsessive dance that makes the pebbles of the Brenta shore fly, nails dirty with earth, black shreds of smoked skin and drops of sweat born transparent and dead dark, on the stones.

Because that's what I need tonight: to be dirty with earth, to cling to the ground with all my strength, confused among the waters, the mud, and the crickets, with a bottle in hand, while friends live around the fire, while the frenzied masterpiece "Vacant moan" pours into the air. I need to feel a life drunk, screaming, eager to tear everything apart in anticipation of a final day that might knock on my door in decades, or tomorrow at dawn. And anyway, there won’t be any witnesses at the duel to ensure pointless equity.

Tonight I am a beast that screams until the vocal cords are gone, that drinks until it no longer sees the stars disunited but gathered under heroic plots, that runs around great fires lit on the sand, scorching like the fear of leaving life to death.

And I like to think that O'Death are just as I imagine them and as they come out of their songs: sincere and chaotic, violent against death and brothers with those they find lying along sandy roads or leaning, almost crucified, against a fence with more nails than wood; like David Rogers-Berry, the band's drummer, recovering from bone cancer, returned to life and the street life of O'Death.

And if one of these nights you should turn into werewolves, this is the best soundtrack for galloping over the hills, abducting cattle, ravaging farms, howling at the moon and stars and haphazardly attacking men armed with torches and rifles: fast folk-punk like a spit, raw as a cirrhotic moonshiner and loaded with acidic and violent humors. There's no room here for urban refinements: just impure, scummy American crap. Appalachian music, acoustic punk with traces of Violent Femmes, slight heavy metal injections (brought by ruthless bassist Jesse Newman), country, bluegrass, a voice that recalls a rabies-free Will Oldham (Greg Jamie, singer and guitarist), percussion constructed by picking junk from attics, a brutal fiddling, banjo, and ukulele (who said the electric guitar is the quintessential punk rock instrument? Listen to Gabe Darling and we'll talk): 14 broken anthems for lives eaten alive in the woods and the most atrocious deserts.