Shadows in the States: Five American Gothic Albums

America, when you look too closely (or, for that matter, look at all) is a dark place. It stands to reason someplace where the land is this ancient and the history is this relatively young would have some darkness to it. Whether it’s a history steeped in acts of inhumanity and injustice or the bizarre patchwork of urban legends and horror stories both real and imagined, this weirdness and darkness stretches from border to border and coast to coast. It’s only natural, then, that American music would reflect that, especially the darker, heavier, and weirder art that the country offers. Numerous bands have drawn influence from the dark and downright strange vibe America has, from genre-busting metal groups to instrumental artists and all points in between. Hopefully, this list will be enough for you to get a taste for the sound and fuel your own explorations.

—Sam Reader

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Earth—Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method
(Southern Lord, 2005)

With track titles taken from the text of Cormac McCarthy’s infamous gothic Blood Meridian and a vibe best described as “what happens when a Western film soundtrack goes on an extended laudanum trip,” Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method finds Earth’s characteristic slow-and-heavy sound married perfectly to distorted country guitars, acoustic instruments, howling winds, occasional windchimes, and other familiar Western sounds. It paints images of desolate badlands, abandoned towns, and vast, uncharted expanses. There’s a sense of space and scope to the album, the kind made for slow trips across America’s vast plains, with the loping, thunderous lower register and sparse melodies adding an ominous, full weight to the subdued feel like a thunderstorm just about to hit. It’s a reminder that even in the West’s desolate beauty and gorgeous vistas, there’s still a lingering, lurking note of evil.

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Wayfarer—A Romance With Violence
(Profound Lore, 2020)

Exploring the West through a marriage of heavy metal and dark country/Old West-style Americana, A Romance With Violence is a gory revisionist Western put to music. Hailing from Denver, Colorado, the home of a blend of Americana, punk, and gothic rock known as the “Denver Sound,” Wayfarer pushes into even heavier territory. A Romance With Violence complements its country and gothic passages and sparser atmospheric vistas with thunderous drums, complex riff-heavy guitar passages, and deep-throated growls, all perfectly suited to the lyrics’ stories of heroic outlaws hanged at the gallows, demonic trains heralding the exploitation of the West, and other Western figures who find themselves at the end of their era.

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Bambara—Stray
(2019, Wharf Cat Records)

Shadow On Everything, Brooklyn trio Bambara’s piledriver of a breakout album excelled at sketching out a picture of downtrodden Americans stuck in a decaying suburban Hell. Stray is no less propulsive nor less narratively rich, though its Southern Gothic landscape finds the band telling shorter, focused, and more controlled stories. Centered around a grotesquely obese machete-wielding vision of Death with a sweet tooth, Stray details his interactions with a series of lowlifes, downtrodden people trapped in bad situations, and the occasional pyromaniac. Like most Southern Gothic works, it doesn’t end well for any of the people caught up in Death’s machinations, but there’s an unusual beauty to images like Death smashing lightning bugs in his hands, or the pyromaniac character Serafina’s nightly bonfires.

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Primeval Well—Talkin’ in Tongues with Mountain Spirits
(2021, Moonlight Cypress Archetypes)

Beginning with field recordings of the mountain woods and an acoustic guitar passage before dissolving into an oppressive chatter of voices, Tennessee Southern Gothic Black Metal band Primeval Well guides the listener into the mountains for a dissonant, disorienting experience. Talkin’ in Tongues with Mountain Spirits works hard to earn its American Gothic cred, too. The album blends old mountain god stories of Appalachia, the dark woods found in so many American folk stories and legends, strange religious imagery, more traditional acoustic instruments, and hard-driving Southern ballads all around a searing, howling black metal core before depositing you once again among the peaceful forest sounds with the same acoustic passage. It’s disorienting at times, but it also perfectly captures the feel of having a bad hallucinogenic trip in the mountain forests, where the old gods live.

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Vile Haint—Ol’ Hatchie Haint
(2021, Moonlight Cypress Archives)

A Southern Gothic Black Metal project from Primeval Well members, Vile Haint takes its name from a Southern colloquialism, and its lyrical content from dark legends and local Tennessee folklore. While the music itself might not betray its roots all that much, between the lyrics about the Hatchie River’s dark spirits and the album’s raw, unnerving, and downright haunted atmosphere, it definitely manages to carry the theme. Vile Haint somehow manages to make the album sound both claustrophobic and wildly atmospheric, like a trip through dark, evil woods where you can barely see the night sky and some horrid ritual is going on just within your earshot.

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