Album Review: Satiricus Doomicus Americus, Satiricus Doomicus Americus
Satiricus Doomicus Americus. Released this past Friday, it is timely enough that it felt in the spirit of the thing to review it the next day, and it serves as something a sidestep, or a holdover, or a gap-bridger between Christopher Thomas Elliott‘s first album under the moniker Buzzard, which was the well-received, less-than-a-year-old Doom Folk (review here), and an impending second full-length, Mean Bone, previously announced as due in 2025. At least as of now, Satiricus Doomicus Americus is listed as a separate project — there are times where it feels like it’s the second Buzzard record we’re getting before the second Buzzard record, and that’s not a complaint — and its songs are distinguished by their outward heft. But, if it is a separate project, it remains adjacent to Buzzard in style and comes across as building off that record’s floor of — wait for it — traditionalist folk influenced by doom metal, tipping if not outright reversing the balance between the two.
Comprised of nine songs, some which reportedly date back to 2009 but are fresh in construction and recording, Satiricus Doomicus Americus lays out its purpose firmly and decisively in the leadoff title-track. The line, “I’m not a cynic I’m a realist,” is defining. There and across much of what follows, Elliott positions himself as a doom troubadour, a post-apocalyptic dustbowl plugged-in Woody Guthrie, skewering fascists and fools with poetry in straightforward language in songs like “Wrong Neighborhood” and “Too Many Humans,” distortion at the ready but never a crutch to be leaned upon. Satiricus Doomicus Americus, in another marked departure from its Buzzardly beginnings, presents a conversationalist aspect with a liberal use of sampling. Not just as random bits of noise or speech thrown here and there, but sounds being purposely applied for rhythm and theme. Part of what a given song — in fact all of them — is expressing.
So although it’s fair to say Satiricus Doomicus Americus is complementary to Buzzard‘s to-date lone LP and likely the one to come it is not shy in its divergences. More on it below, but the closing duo of revamped Buzzard songs that close out, “Death Metal in America (Meat Market Version),” which gets a winning extra verse I won’t spoil and “Cockroaches and Weed (Kills Them Dead Version),” which puts old commercial taglines to good use, are a ready analogy for how Satiricus Doomicus Americus and Elliott‘s ‘main band’ (?) are intertwined. As the name of the project, title and eponymous opening track reaffirm, social critique is also a big part of what’s on display.
The sneer of “Nice Little Annihilation Song” is well suited to the frenetic acoustic strum and banjo arrangement as Elliott and his litany of old clips conjure endtimes preach, departing the stomp of the opener for a dark Americana shuffle — as opposed to the “Shuffle of the Dead,” which comes later — before the fuzz returns in “Wrong Neighborhood.” A ballad in terms of the lyrical storytelling, it cleverly takes the trope of a racist dogwhistle and turns it on its head to point out the hypocrisy beneath, and has one of the album’s best hooks besides and an arrangement that’s atmospheric and heavy with a garage-doom strut.
Satiricus Doomicus Americus is louder, generally, than circa-’24 Buzzard, but the manner in which it varies in mood and what’s happening in the details of each song is consistent. “Grass is Greener” stays mellow with foreboding plucked notes and the standout line, “A leaf will curl and die to catch the rain,” starting with a sample about man’s dominance over nature and mesmerizing with subdued vibe before old horns spliced in from the public domain blast to snap you back to reality for “Automobile,” which brings the drums back to the mix with a splash of cymbals to meet the low fuzz in the bass before the first verse, thoughtful in its rhyme scheme and lumbering in its chug as the hook asks who’s gonna kill the automobile. And indeed, who?
This kind of direct sociopolitical comment, unrepentantly relevant, was part of what made Doom Folk such an immediate standout, and Elliott is in his element across Satiricus Doomicus Americus, counting on his audience to get the Candlemass nod and understand that beneath all the trades between acoustics and electrics, electrics and acoustics, acoustic electrics and electric acoustics, banjo, bass, probably-programmed drums, the foundations of songs like “Too Many Humans” is as much slow metallic crawl as it is gothified pastoralia or protest folk.
That Elliott can dwell in either space, as that same song readily proves en route to the Night of the Living Dead sample that makes itself a hook in the subsequent “Shuffle of the Dead,” is revealed as a strength here that Doom Folk only hinted toward, and for what it’s worth, neither the doom nor the folk are skimped. If you caught Buzzard‘s single “Crushing Burden of Despair” (posted here) back in October, the full-tone, full-band-style swing that was being explored is part of Satiricus Doomicus Americus as well, at least intermittently, and the statement is plain that Elliott refuses to be limited to one modus or another in terms of sound or statement.
Again, “Death Metal in America (Meat Market Version)” and “Cockroaches and Weed (Kills Them Dead Version)” say it even plainer. Both are thickened up versions of cuts from Doom Folk, as noted, and before you start to wonder if that counts as a cover when somebody reworks a song across two at least nominally different solo-projects and surely cause your head to explode, what matters more is the willingness to let those songs be malleable. To let them live. My understanding is these are earlier versions or at least rooted in earlier versions than what showed up on Doom Folk, but the point stands. Just because one version of a thing is recorded, that doesn’t mean it has to be static, only that, forever. That very same creative openness, Elliott letting himself just mess with it, is likewise responsible for the varied arrangements throughout and Satiricus Doomicus Americus‘ capacity to boil down complex ideas into accessible sound.
You can pinpoint this or that nuance in terms of influence, either from doom, metal, folk, or, with the samples, hip-hop and pop, but I can only think of one other outfit with a style like Satiricus Doomicus Americus, and that’s Buzzard. This record will resonate more with some than others — it hit a nerve with me, clearly — but it shares Buzzard‘s listenability as it expands on the purpose and scope of the craft. It makes me more excited to hear where Elliott might take Buzzard over the course of Mean Bone while likewise making it harder to predict just what that will actually sound like. Given the results here, Elliott obviously thrives in open possibility.
Whatever else is to follow, as my homeland makes ready to reembrace the politics of hateful and destructive absurdity with demonstrably little to no preparation to get what it asked for, the moment feels right for Satiricus Doomicus Americus. Sometimes you get just what you need.
