audiObelisk: Godhunter Stream City of Dust in Full
It should say something about the conceptual nature of Godhunter‘s approach that their lyric sheet comes with footnotes. Today, the Tuscon-based six-piece release their debut long-player, City of Dust, on CD via Battleground Records/The Compound. It’s an album that wears its aggression and political mentality likewise on its sleeve, and from the opening sample that, backed by feedback and effects, leads the way into the undulating, punishingly slow riff of “Despite All,” Godhunter show that they’re more than willing to manually drive these ideas into your brain if that’s what it’s going to take to get them there. Tackling issues within their native Arizona (“Rats in the Walls,” “Snake Oil Dealer”) and the Southwest in general (the closing “Plague Widow”), the eight component tracks of the 49-minute album come across with staggering intensity despite what’s usually a fairly grueling pace. It is as much a multi-chapter sludgecore manifesto as it is a collection of memorably-riffed songs.
Godhunter‘s hardcore roots shine through in their arrangements, and even with cellist/keyboardist/effects specialist Matthew Davis at work throughout, the riffs of “Despite All,” “Palace of Thorn” and the guitar-siren-infused “City of Dust” lumber in classic-if-thickened fashion. Elsewhere, guitarists David Rodgers (also vocals) and Jake Brazelton bring an almost Southern metal sensibility to the largesse of “Brushfires,” while bassist Ryan “Dick” Williamson and drummer Andy Kratzenberg lend further heft and punctuation to the steady roll, but the raw-throat of vocalist Charlie Touseull keeps City of Dust aligned to a tradition of socially conscious underground rage, lines like “No rescue for those already dead/Reason cast 
aside for myth instead,” from “Brushfires” showcasing the rhythmic push that accompanies such vitriol. If there’s an aberration from Godhunter‘s onslaught, it comes in “Shooting down the Sun” at the start of the second half of the tracklist, on which guest vocalist Carlos Arzate sings clean over mournful acoustic guitars and Davis‘ cello. It’s the shortest track on City of Dust at 4:44, but the gravitas it lends the surrounding material is put to solid and pummeling use.
The corresponding affirmation of Godhunter‘s brutality, then, would have to be the closer. “Plague Widow,” with gang-style backing vocals from Matt Martinez, Nate Garrett and Chthon Leemont, is a 10-minute sensory assault that compounds references to the Bible and The Tempest with keyboard atmospherics and an insistent repetitions over a marching riff that aren’t so much hypnotic as like being punched with music, cello and amp noise finally serving as City of Dust‘s leadout over the fading guitar, bass and drums. The line that Touseull and company leave on is “This is hell and all the devils are here,” and like the rest of City of Dust, it seems unlikely that’s happenstance. So thought-through is the album that it’s easy to forget it’s Godhunter‘s first — their prior release was late 2011’s Wolves EP (review here) — but if they’re to move forward from this as their starting point, they’ve presented a multifaceted and passionate foundation from which to progress. On any angle from which you might want to approach it, City of Dust is more than just a sludge record.
They’ve got it at their Bandcamp, but I’ve been given permission to stream the album here and I’m not about to say no. After the player, you’ll find the lyric sheet with track-by-track info on all the songs. Please enjoy.
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Godhunter‘s City of Dust is available now digitally through their Bandcamp page and on CD via Earsplit Distro‘s website. Here are the lyric sheets:
