Review & Full Album Stream: Dee Calhoun, Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on June 22nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Dee Calhoun’s Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia in its entirety. Album is out tomorrow through Argonauta Records.]
Perhaps best known as the final vocalist for Iron Man and for currently fronting Spiral Grave, who are the spiritual successors of said legends of Maryland doom, Dee Calhoun takes on the task of his fourth solo album in expansive fashion. Across 10 songs/51 minutes, Calhoun, bassist “Iron” Louis Strachan (also of Iron Man lineage, as well as Life Beyond and Wretched) and percussionist/vocalist Rob Calhoun, present Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia as a complement to a Calhoun-penned collection of four novellas published under the same name. As regards full-lengths, it follows behind 2020’s Godless (review here) and 2018’s Go to the Devil (review here), his debut, Rotgut (review here), having arrived in 2016, and maintains in the vein of the Southern apocalyptic acoustic metal that has typified Calhoun‘s work to-date.
But the arrangements run deeper on Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia, and though Calhoun — who here is multi-instrumentalist as well as singer, playing acoustic and electric guitar and a variety of other stringed instruments as well as keyboard — and many songs are united by a kind of heavy, rhythmic, maybe software-based thud, a large-footed stomp in leaves or dirt that one compare to some of Author & Punisher‘s mammoth plod. As Calhoun makes his way through opener “The Day the Rats Came to Town,” soaring on the first sung lyric after the spoken intro, backed by acoustic guitar and harmonica, some flourish of electric guitar hints at the depth of detailing to follow throughout, whether it’s in a whisper track as on “Conjured” or the later “All I Need is One,” the sample at the start of “Verachte Diese Hure,” or the higher-notes line of keys peppered into “Pulse,” and so on. Like some aspect of each of Calhoun‘s solo albums to-date, the abiding theme is anti-religious, untrusting of the traveling preacher who turns out to be the devil, and so on, Calhoun at once sympathetic for the plight of this imaginary devil-beset populace and kind of calling them stupid for believing in the first place: “Closing minds that open wounds in the name of a counterfeit god/With the sin of their own, they spare the rod,” go the lyrics of “Pulse.”
Religious corruption is not the only theme, of course. Calhoun follows the sample in “Verachte Diese Hure” (German for ‘despise this whore’) with some far back percussion, string sounds and a simple, consistent beat, with his voice using the space in the mix, powerful as one might expect. There’s some swagger in his guitar work that wouldn’t be there a couple years ago, and he’s more willing to dwell in the parts, as later shows on the tense verses of “Self-Inflicted,” backed by Rob and a lower-mixed, slow beat behind the guitar. “A Wish in the Darkness” brings a Zeppelin via Down key change to brighter acoustic sentiments, its vocals in layers except that howl of “too late!” before three minutes in and folkish complemented by subtle keys later and Strachan‘s bassline.
That fullness of sound continues on the subsequent “New Modern World” with its hints toward flamenco rhythm missing just the the handclaps joining in and old Western catchiness, the vocals (at least) doubled over the sharp guitar progression as Rob takes his first and likely not last lead spot, plenty of room later for the harmonica solo and whatever wobbly-metal-thing, possibly found instrument percussion is banged on in the background, effectively, since for all the progression and opening sonic doors and bringing in new elements Calhoun does throughout Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia, it’s also his fourth album and by now he’s clearly got a decent idea of the kind of fun he’s looking to have. “New Modern World” is hookier than some of the material around it, but is a fitting landmark as Calhoun and company roll through “Pulse” and the dramatic, guitar-forward, swirling around of “Self-Inflicted,” which is foreboding in a less direct way than “Verachte Diese Hure” but still gets its point across in lyrics like “No life, no hope, no chance, no love from anywhere/Lash out but no one seems to care.” Amid distant crackles keeping the rhythm, keyboard enters at around three minutes in, the brooding sensibility maintained.
“Stand With Me” reignites the don’t-come-’round-here-again twang of “Verachte Diese Hure,” but pairs it with harmonized vocals — Dee and his daughter Nadia — and a fuller-sounding arrangement, that same thud buried under the guitars, harmonica or some such, some kind of thing-hitting-another-thing keeping a tinny beat for an extra backwoods feel that reminds all the more of Larman Clamor‘s swamp blues on “All I Need is One,” which follows and puts a heavier, distorted single-stringed diddley bow at the start before an up-front verse takes hold, down to the business of semi-plugged blues metal. A there and gone whisper, intertwining strum and shaker, it’s doom, or at very least Calhoun‘s recontextualizing of it. He is guttural in the line, “I don’t need a million preachers telling me the shape I’m in/All I need is one solution and the healing can begin,” and could carry this material with his voice alone, easily, but that he doesn’t is emblematic of his growth as a songwriter and his emergent willingness to experiment around his central approach.
The final lines of “All I Need is One” are about having “zero fucks to give,” the last one purposefully over-the-top and hilariously grandiose, and if that’s what’s gotten him to where he is, fair enough. As regards philosophies, one could clearly do worse. The closing title-track (premiered here) caps with continued thud and apocalyptic storytelling, some residual metallic shimmer or shake or rattle, and melody forcefully delivered in a way that’s very much Calhoun‘s own despite its long roots in classic metal. “Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia” is the longest cut on the album that shares its name at 6:50, and feels like it’s building initially, though it evens out as the verses unfold.
One can’t help but wonder what a full-band arrangement from Dee Calhoun — the name as a band — might sound like, with drums, bass, guitars, maybe keys given the more prominent role they play here? I don’t know, but Calhoun might get there given the steady growth in his approach that’s unfurled across what’s by this time a respectable solo catalog to go with all his ‘in-band’ pedigree. Multifaceted and multimedia as the album, book, videos and so forth are, it’s difficult to summarize a narrative or speak for the full scope of the outing, but in offering his audience as much depth as possible for Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia, Calhoun is well in keeping with the longstanding, sleeve-worn passion that’s been driving him all this time.
