Of all the not-metal-but-metal-adjacent things we cover on this site, my favorites are easily dark folk/country or Gothic Americana releases. I’m always scanning the promo sump for those occasional gems like Henry Derek Elis or Lord Buffalo or Wailin’ Storms so I can snap them up before my mouth-breathing colleagues have a chance to whine “Hey! This am country! No like twang! Make riffs go ‘brrrrr!'” I won’t belabor the point, but if you want a window into my tastes, you can read the intro to my review of Tohu Wa Bohu. All this to say, the moment I saw the title of Dee Calhoun’s fourth solo record in the pit, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia, I was on it like a fly on a cow pie. In metal circles, “Screaming Mad Dee” is best known as the fourth and final vocalist of classic doom act Iron Man, as well as the vocalist of the subsequent band Spiral Grave. Calhoun is also a writer of horror/fantasy/sci-fi, and a collection of novelettes of the same name will accompany this release. For our purposes here, we’ll focus strictly on the music.
Instrumentally, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia has as much metal to it as a possum has tail hair. This is country/folk heavy on twang, acoustic instruments and spit-my-chaw-in-yer-eye attitude. According to the promotional material, Calhoun employs a number of traditional non-traditional instruments such as cigar box banjos, shovel guitars, diddley bows, a pan flute made of Yankee bones, mouth harps, an old moonshiner whistling between his tooth gaps, a half-full spittoon, bagpipes made out of an anthropomorphic badger and those spoons you slap on your knees to make them go “clickety-clack.” I’m embellishing a bit, but you get the picture. Vocally, this is exactly the sum of its parts, which is to say it’s an old doom guy wailing over country/folk music. Calhoun’s well-seasoned voice falls in the range between clean tones and gruff harshness on most tracks, with the notable exceptions of “A Wish in the Darkness” and “Self-Inflicted,” where he does his best Neil Young impression.
If you happen to like old doom guys and traditional country/folk, the combination of the two can be quite affecting. At its best, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia brings all the atmosphere of a haunted holler to bear, as it does on the two-song mid-album stretch of “Conjured” and “Pulse.” The former combines harrowing, paranoid raving about contemplated murder with pitch-black gothic country. The latter harnesses the repetitive nature of traditional folk and the album’s best twangy guitar lick to compliment Calhoun’s ragged, dramatic vocal delivery. “Screaming Mad Dee” is clearly enjoying himself here and on bookend tracks “The Day the Rats Came to Town” and “Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia,” which are, not coincidentally, the songs doing the heavy lifting when it comes to the overarching narrative.
Considering the charm of Calhoun’s voice and his skillful instrumentation, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia falls disappointingly short in its songwriting. With the exception of a couple tracks noted above, nothing here sticks in the craw. Songs ramble until they end rather than wrap up tightly, and in the absence of choruses and hooks, songs bleed together until the sudden clean electric plucking of “Self-Inflicted,” which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album. This feels like a collection of vignettes stretched too thin to make them songs. Maybe this is purposeful. After all, the music is supporting material for a collection of novellas, but it can make for an underwhelming listen. Additionally, when Calhoun lyrically strays from the narrative, as on “New Modern World” and “All I Need Is One,” he can give off big old-man-yells-at-cloud energy.1
I confess that I’m almost certainly not going to read the literary part of this project. Strictly musically speaking, taken as a whole, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia can be a slog due to the length, uniformity of material and lack of hooks. However, if you feel like some ramshackle doom crooning over bleak backwoods music, the best three or four songs here would be sufficient to scratch that itch.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Argonauta Records
Websites: screamingmaddee.com | facebook.com/screamingmaddee
Releases Worldwide: June 23rd, 2023
