Spiritworld – ‘DEATHWESTERN’ [Album Review]

If you hadn’t already heard Pagan Rhythms by Las Vegas’ Spiritworld when they walked out on stage in the August heat at Bloodstock Open Air looking like they’d strolled out of a saloon bar rather than a festival dressing room, then you should have soon realized you were about to witness the coolest band of 2022. It’s also a theme that continues on DEATHWESTERN, as after you’ve soaked up the brilliant artwork, the opening intro, “Mojave Bloodlust,” throws you right into the soundtrack to every cowboy film you’ve ever seen.

That being said, the world of singer and multi-instrumentalist Stu Folsom isn’t specifically all about cowboy shootouts at high noon. Instead, Folsom’s vision is of an apocalyptic horror-western world, and he marries that terrifying scene with a soundtrack that teeters on the edge of hell itself. Built around ferocious blasts of hardcore and traditional death metal and thrash, Folsom and his band careen violently through “Relic of Damnation” and “Purified In Violence.” Peppering the tracks with horror-inspired interludes, songs like “Committee of Buzzards” are nasty neck snappers, with Folsom’s gravel-stained vocals sounding like they’ve inhaled way too much of that Las Vegas desert dust.

Scrape your way through Folsom’s sandblasted vocals and the cocktail of punk, death metal and hardcore, and you’ll find there is much more to Spiritworld. A vehicle for Folsom’s other passion, that of horror fiction writing, DEATHWESTERN draws from the latest in a series of dark, apocalyptic tales from the vocalist, which he describes as being “inhabited by a rogues’ gallery of unlikely heroes; gunslingers, necrophiliac preachers, Comanches and a train-hopping, serial sodomite demon slayer.”

In sum, If all of the above, plus the endorsement of ex-Slayer/Exodus guitarist Gary Holt and Soulfly frontman Max Cavalera hasn’t already been enough to convince you that Spiritworld is essential to your life, then a full-volume blast of DEATHWESTERN should soon have you accept that they are going to become your new favourite band heading into 2023.

DEATHWESTERN Track Listing:

1. Mojave Bloodlust
2. DEATHWESTERN
3. Relic of Damnation
4. Purafied in Violence
5. Ulcer
6. Committee of Buzzards
7. The Heretic Butcher
8. Moonlit Torture
9. Crucified Heathen Scum
10. Lujuria Satanica
11. 1000 Deaths

Run Time: 36:13
Release Date: November 25, 2022
Record Label: Century Media Records