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Today’s tip-off is the latest dark and rootsy release from O’Death.

With a sound that draws from murder ballads and other songs of sorrow from the great Appalachian-American songbook, O’Death has carved out an impressive claim to the 16 Horsepower throne. But where David Eugene Edwards from 16HP wrote primarily of a distinctly Old Testament/Vengeful God and followed that muse into ominous meditative music, Greg Jamie of O’Death has often utilized a narrative thread through his work that references the natural world and our relationship to it in life, and in death. If 16HP always sounded like a backwoods church where people in wool clothes handle snakes to show their devotion to Jesus, O’Death is the Pagan throw down a few miles away in the very heart of the woods, where God is squishing up between your toes and snakes are invited but not turned into a litmus test.

Like 16HP, O’Death has always injected the source material with an energy that makes the band not only fit right in on a punk rock bill, but in fact then makes the punk rock in question seem silly and toothless. The shame in this is that often the sheer visceral event of the band playing at it’s manic best is such that it’s easy to get caught up and miss the finer points of the band. Luckily their latest, Outside, replaces the sweat and adrenalin with songs that are haunting, ominous and ultimately beautiful. The woods are dark, but there’s magic in them as well. Shades of the old eastern European music that those original mountain people carried over with them mixes with the high and lonesome to make the foundation of Outside‘s sound, and while the songwriting and arrangements definitely pay tribute to both past traditions, they also update it with fresh melodies and approaches to make it one of the best albums we’ve heard all year. Check it out for yourself here.

Here is the video for the first single “Bugs” and O’Death’s upcoming tour dates.

Posted on April 26, 2011 at 9:51 am in Tuesday Tip-Off   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL