‘God of the Dead’: Rosetta West Unleashes a Wild, Haunting Blues Spell
2 min read
Rosetta West’s ‘God of the Dead’ is not the kind of album you put on for background music. It grabs you by the ears from the very first second and never lets go. It’s raw, brazen, and weirdly beautiful. Where their previous release ‘Gravity Sessions’ was a tight, compact little number, ‘God of the Dead’ takes its sweet time. The songs stretch out, breathe, open up and let the music breathe. Every song sounds like it has earned its spot here, and yet none of them sound quite like the last. This isn’t blues rock, it’s blues rock getting bent by strange ideas, drenched in longing and dragged through the back alleys of punk, folk and psych.
It kicks off with “Boneyard Blues”, grimy as a graveyard swamp. It drips with dark swagger. “Underground” follows in a much looser and almost hypnotic groove. “I Don’t Care” pulls harder on the punk rock vibe. “Chain Smoke” is thicker in the air, dragging its riffs along like a bad habit. “Town Of Tomorrow” is more pensive. It paces slower but it never slows down on the bite. “Susanna Jones, Pt. 1” delves more into storytelling and “Tao Teh King” acts almost as a sort of spiritual intermission. It’s gentle and meditative. “My Life” is more earnest, and the sparseness of the instrumentation lets the lyrics breath more. “Baby Come Home” and “Summertime” warm things up and feel more soulful, before it gets darker again with “Dead of Night”, “Thorns of Beauty”, and “Inferno”, each sounding like the last and more like some otherworldly wraith in a machine.
By the time we hit “Susanna Jones Pt. 2” and the spectral closer “Midnight”, the album has already taken us through so many different moods that one could hardly place a finger on the complete effect. Suffice to say, Rosetta West are not ones to avoid risk and every sound, lyric, and solo sounds imbued with purpose. Rosetta West may be an underground band, but with ‘God of the Dead’, they’re scratching deep, bold lines across the surface. It’s ugly, strange, and beautifully alive.
English