Consuming the Tangible

From November 1, 2023

Sometimes you make mistakes. I wrote a whole post about some of the mistakes I made when it came to end of year lists, and then just a month or so later made another mistake: putting A Romance With Violence by Denver’s Wayfarer at only 21 when it should have been much, much higher. Since then, it’s been one of my most listened to records, with that opening section of “The Crimson Rider (Gallows Frontier, Part 1)” still being one of the best riffs to come out in the last 10 years. So, when the chance to grab the promo for their new release American Gothic came in, I grabbed it immediately. I knew what to expect, but that’s not the same as what I got, which is a refinement of everything I loved and a masterful, complete record I guarantee will be placing much, much higher in the year of our Goat Lord, 2023.

Read the rest over at Nine Circles.

Still one of my favorite metal records of the 2020s. Wayfarer know precisely how to milk that whole “frontier black metal” for all its worth; the opening riffs to “The Thousand Tombs of Western Promise” alone make up some of my favorite metal of all time. There’s a sense of grand majesty to the music, a visual touch that puts me in the hot, dusty outskirts of a troubled town.

That sense of place, of putting me into the music is so important to me. I need to be able to put myself into the music, to let it tell its story in a way that can work with the inner turmoil and anxieties of my addled brain. American Gothic has the ability to put me in so many places – in that dusty town, on a darkened stage (one of my sleep tricks is to listen to music and pretend I’m on stage playing it, focusing on how I would interpret the guitar, analyzing pick slides and hammer ons until I would fall asleep.

I spent a portion of last week going through the piles of vinyl around the house figuring out what I can live without, stripping away albums I never listen to, or at least have no reason to listen to on vinyl – I was never one of those “Everything sounds better on vinyl” folks. When I hit the “W” section Wayfarer was an instant keeper. I don’t see that changing any time soon, especially with news of their new combined label Vesperian with the likes of Dreadnought, Stormkeep, and other like-minded musicians.

Great, great stuff.