Most bands in the gothic country genre peter out without any notice. There's no energy left for any long-term severance, conflicts, animosity, envy, defamation or dramatic ending. They just stop playing. Reunion in the music business is rare. Reunion in the gothic country genre is unheard of. Now it has happened. No less than the mother of (almost) all gothic country bands, Sixteen Horsepower, is going to reunite. Not permanently, the reunion is a one-time thing. Frontfigure David Eugene Edwards wrote on the Wovenhand Facebook page: "It is a special honor and privilege to reunite and drift like sleep into the Hotel Montana. To the Great Blackfeet nation’s sovereign lands for Fire In The Mountains festival 2026". The Fire in the Mountains festival will be held in East Glacier, Montana, from July 23-26, 2026, at Red Eagle Campground. I will follow it from a distance. David Eugene Edwards is 57 years old, but is still active. He released a brilliant solo album in 2023, read more here (opens in a new window). A new album has been announced. David Eugene Edwards wrote on the Wovenhand Facebook page: "To whom it may concern. Follow up album to Hyacinth (pictured below) is now completed. Thanks to all of you who helped support its creation. Title, artwork and release date coming soon". This was equally unexpected and fabulous. Expect nothing and appreciate everything.

Munly J. Munly is touring in Europe in November and December 2025. I wrote a blog post called "Fear of missing out" a couple of weeks ago. In the blog post I didn't go into detail and speculate if Munly was going to bring a guitar or a banjo (or both). The matter has been settled. Munly has written on his Facebook page: "Questions have been asked if this will be like the old solo shows with a boom box and cassettes. No. Perhaps a little help from a little friend that some have met. Unfortunately the new design plans did not arrive in time for Schecter @schecterguitarsofficial to build a new autoharp so this one will have to do". What a brilliant idea. Not only is the autoharp portable and lightweight. The autoharp is also a great instrument to provide self-accompaniment. It's perfect for strumming. Even the simpliest strumming sounds lovely due to the number of octaves available. However, I didn't put the autoharp in the cost-benefit analysis in the blog post a couple of weeks ago. Maybe the outcome would have been different. 

The American music magazine Rolling Stone has made a fool of themselves (again). The magazine has presented a list of the "Top 50 Bands of All Time". The ignorant masses cheer. For example the site howtofeelgood.net (health and wellness page for those who want to keep fit and feel good) wrote: "This prestigious ranking highlights the most influential and celebrated groups in music history, honoring their lasting impact and contributions to the industry." In fact, the list is just ridiculous. I mean, placing U2 (no.3), Oasis (no.8), The Strokes (no.22), Guns N Roses (no.28) and Stone Roses (no.34) makes no sense. Halfway through, the editors seems to have become aware of that there were no black artists on the list and took affirmative action. Sly Stone and Public Enemy were included. I'm not the only one who have objections. In fact, the internet is filled with concerned people crossing over or replacing names. I haven't gone that far. Instead, I have rearranged the list in the correct order (my own list would have ended after no. 30). Finally, I have measured the similarity. Pearson correlation coefficient (rho) is a statistical method that measures the similarity or correlation between two data objects by comparing their attributes and calculating a score ranging from -1 to +1. A high score indicates high similarity, while a score near zero indicates no correlation. Pearson rho in this case is 0.18. And the conclusion? Do it over, do it right.

Disclaimer: Black Sabbath (first six albums), Deep Purple (third to ninth album), AC/DC (first three albums).

I thought that the upcoming album from Sons of Perdition would be an album called "Caul-Birth King and Other Abruptions". The omnious title signals experimental music in the same vein as bone-crushing "Gathered Blood" (2016) and "Heathen Hof" (2022). Apparently, the Caul-Birth project has been overtaken by another recording project. The upcoming album is called "Ars Moriendi". It means "The Art of Dying" and refers to Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to die in a dignified way according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages. From the press release: "The album marks a significant departure from their recent cacophonous exploration of sound, instead opting for an experimentally acoustic approach that examines Medieval attitudes toward mortality during the time of the Black Death." "Ars Moriendi" is a wholly acoustic album. The explanation to this can be found in the press release. The decision is "a reaction against the increasing prominence of AI and other technologies intended to wrestle art from the hands of people for the sake of our new feudal lords. I want to make very human music. I’m trying to reconnect with the humanity that we’re leaving further behind before it’s drowned out in a history-wiping deluge of artificially created slop." This is a low-key and restrained album. No bone-crushing. Still, it has all the desirable Sons of Perdition attributes. I've had the opportunity to pre-listen to the album. This is what I have found out.  

The album begins with "Stealer of Songs". As opposed to the life-affirming "singer of songs", I guess. Anyway, it's a great opening song with sparse arrangements. The soft double bass (played by Simon Broke) fills the function of a metronome. The lyrics frames the atmosphere of the album. "Life is a hole / Never meant to be filled". Well, it's self-explanatory. The second song is "Caught in the Gristmill". A gristmill is a mill that grinds grain into flour, and its waterwheel uses a water source like a river or millrace to power this process. The song unfolds slowly with increasingly pained and tormented vocals. "My boy is buried ‘neath the tree / Beside his mother on the hill / They were caught in the gristmill / Of Heaven and Hell again". Undoubtedly, one of the best songs on the album. The third song, "Danse Macabre", offers chewiness even for SOP-trained ears. Not a bad song, but too chewy for me. "Croak! Croak! Croak! Caw! Caw! Caw! Crack! Crack! Crack! Bang! Bang! Bang! Tap! Tap! Tap!". The fourth song is "Canticum Mortis" (song of death in Latin). Elevated chanting in Latin. The lyrics are pitch-black. At least, according to Google Translate. But, you don't really need the translation to understand that this isn't something to be taken lightly. The fifth song, “The Pardoners Song" begins with whistling. The arrangement and instrumentation are perfectly executed. "Magna pestis vincit omnia" (The great plague conquers all). One of the best songs on the album. The sixth song, "Four Brothers Lost in the Mouth of the World" doesn't stand out in any way. The seventh song "Think About Death While Your Grave Is Yet Undug" is short, slow and dark. "So before the last gasp / Of thy laboured breath / And worms make thy flesh boil and writhe / Sit thee in silence / And contemplate Death / While Saturn yet sharpens his scythe".   

The eight song is "The Cruelty of Youth". The gothic element in the music of Sons of Perdition is brought into full effect. It has every attribute you can ask for: slow pace, extreme darkness and well-written lyrics. "I lay my misdeeds at the crimson feet / Of the cruelty of youth". The ninth song is "A Holy Stone". Everything is great about this song. This is "gothic hymnal" in lack of a better term. The tenth song is "A Hand In A Glove On Fire". It doesn't say anything about my life. Now we come to the three last songs of the album. Zebulon Whatley hasn't exhausted himself. In fact, he has saved the best to last. The eleventh song is "The Rambler's Lament". Slow banjo picking and double bass. "Her name echoes cruelly / Again and again / I keep her hair in a locket / In the palm of my hand". The twelth song is "The Three Living And the Prodigious Dead". "We are your blood, we are your flesh / Born from the wives whom you caress / What you are, so once were we / What we are falls unto thee". Great song. The thirteenth song is "In Sickness". The closing song should always be a song of parting or a song of love. This song deals with parting and love. For me, the song is almost unbearable. "I love you in sickness / With my last gasp of breath / I’ll sing your precious name / As I surrender to Death / And when he parts the curtain / To that hallowed other side / Throw us both in that pit / Where the earth has been split / And we’ll slumber together inside". And then its over.  

And finally, the overall assessment. This is a brilliant album. Sons of Perdition provides a bottomless pit of suffering and pain. The album is incredible dark. In fact, it should come with a disclaimer. Other than that, the production is very clean. As always, Zebulon Whatley master the difficult art of placing the songs in the right order. You can listen to the album and buy it at Bandcamp. It will be released on 11 November, 2025.   
      

There was a time when music magazines viewed as their task to introduce their readers to new and interesting music. This time has come and gone. Music journalism of today, to the extent it exists, is close to necrophilia. Covering archival releases from Neil Young (it never ends), highlighting a 50-year anniversary of a Queen album, resurrection of Oasis, digging up Gram Parsons, what Roger Waters thinks of David Gilmour and vice versa isn't exactly new and interesting. We can all agree upon that the golden age of music magazines is over. Some magazines have ceased to exist (Q), some magazines are now only published bimonthly (NME), while others are still published monthly but, in practise, have moved over to the web (Rolling Stone, Mojo and Uncut). They are held up by a diminishing group of elderly men with purchasing power clinging on to their adolescent heroes. I have never cared for music magazines. The empty phrases and all the gibberish, the rumination, the stereotype journalistic angle, the pretentious narrative style, the incomplete sentence structure are things that bothers me. The low ambition is the worst. My website is sometimes referred to as a blog. Well, there are more blog posts than articles. But, on the the other hand, the regrowth in the genre is close to zero. I have never claimed to be a journalist or to have any journalistic ambitions. I'm only a civil servant with an internet connection. Some people say that music journalists are just failed musicians. That's not entirely true, but it sure explains a lot.