So much for preconceptions. With a name like O’Death, an album cover of cut-out faces and scratchy images with scribbled lyrics like “Oh God my hate/could fill the air/with open wounds/with vacant stare”, you could quite easily assume that this band are hardcore death-metallers. Instead, you are treated to bouncy folk music. Folk - yes, that’s right - music.
Well, I suppose it could be called folk metal. It certainly has the appropriate parts in the aforementioned points of prejudice, but, thinking about it, a more appropriate genre title would be heavy folk - not that that sounds any less strange. Folk that is, for want of a better term, folk, but a little more than usual.
Let me explain myself. If you have seen “O Brother Where Art Thou?”, the Cohen brothers’ Odyssey-derived, Mississippi-based epic, you may have got the sense of an undercurrent of darkness, of obsessions with witchcraft and omens, madness and death, all tied in with country and blues music. Note, for example, the siren’s song (“Go to sleep, my little baby/Go to sleep, my little baby/ You and me and the Devil makes three/Don’t need no other lovin’ baby”), and Tommy, the guitarist who sold his soul to play his instrument well. Similar dark meanings are purportedly behind many popular nursery rhymes.
So perhaps this vague whisper of menace befits an album like Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin. It certainly provides an interesting counterpoint to the sometimes-energetic, sometimes-thoughtful music. And good music it is, too, though (unsurprisingly) odd. “Home” sounds like a modern “Eleanor Rigby”, “Ratscars” like an Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster song covered by Hayseed Dixie. “Legs To Sin” sounds like some of those odd ska-punk bands that incorporate traditional Irish melodies and/or pirate sea shanties in their songs. The brilliant “Fire On Peshtigo” smashes from a Rawhide-esque intro to a shouting, wailing chorus, the kind of thing that Guy Ritchie would put over a violent montage, and a theme which is later echoed on “Mountain Shifts”.
It is extremely difficult to think of anything bad about O’Death, except for a personal preference for non-folk music. Even then, there is enough to provide even the most vehement folk-hater with a good listen. In fact, the more I listen, the more I love it. Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin is a fascinating album, full of intelligence and charm, possessing a refined roughness and toe-tapping awesomeness.
www.myspace.com/odeath
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O'Death - Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin
