The Agnostic Phibes Rhythm & Blood Conspiracy
Album: Campfire Tales
Label: Shoutin' Abner Pim Recordings
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.saprecordings.com

Are you sitting comfortably?… Then I'll begin… Once upon a time there was a brave and ferocious punk-hillbilly outfit from Calgary called The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, who frightened the horses into submission with two CDs of thrillingly raw and twisted mountain music (Fighting & Onions and Ten Thousand); and then, just a couple of years ago; they went into hiding… Now Messrs. Keelaghan, Sobolewski and Woolley have emerged from the backwoods again, but this time to unveil an electrifying (in every sense!) collaboration with mysterious singer/guitarist/tunesmith Tom Bagley, aka Jackson Phibes (of long-standing garage-punk band Forbidden Dimension).

Campfire Tales really is a killer of an album, on which the musicians sew together the worlds of garage rock and raw roots music, building a bridge between the old-time tradition of the murder ballad and modern-day macabre storytelling. The dark imagery is oh so appropriately conveyed by brooding, snarling, wailing electric guitars taken from what might be a nightmare western movie soundtrack by Sid Vicious: guitars that mirror the howling vocals and brood on the ghoulish commentaries therein. This musical beast is wild and savage, and throbbing with grit and guts, yet the album of its progeny is replete with a surprising degree of contrast between tracks, from the ominously arcane title number to the "deep claw grooves" of Wolfman Franz and the sinister Voices. The rushing-like-the-howling-wind vibe of Windigo Song delivers Waits-like vocals, searing slide guitar and metal-driven drumming, and the ululating wordless finale Blind Ghost Moan lives up to its title as it crashes on past the crossroads and into the night.

Wild Night Company comes over like one of those stompin' Joe Meek instrumentals, almost as if The Shads had partaken of the acid and recorded a spaghetti-western-horror theme. Some of the tracks are more than anything resemble classic Beefheart thrash (if admittedly not quite as wilful or eccentric in terms of time-signatures), with suitably growly, grinding vocals and pounding bass and drums.

Aside perhaps from one or two slightly mundane tracks near the end of the album, this is as convincing a slab of True-Blood roots-punk-meets-mountain-music as you're likely to get. OK, an honourable one-off, maybe, but a bit of a cult classic methinks.

David Kidman