Dissocial personality disorder equals great music! When I got an email from Jess at Kemado Records raving about the upcoming O’Death album “Broken Hymns, Limbs, and Skin”, I suddenly had a Vietnam-esque flashback about my traumatic experience with another Kemado band The Sword. Long story short, I drove 3 hours to go to the Kemado Record party at SXSW because a publicist was raving about The Sword, and their set was so fucking bad that after I left I wanted to go torture babies and kick a few puppies. You can read more about my SXSW experience on my website. Anyhow, I thought that O’Death would be another overhyped Norse Mythology band, but Jess kept on about how great O'Death is, so I had her send me an advance of their album “Broken Hymns, Limbs, and Skin”.
Into the first song from “Broken Hymns, Limbs, and Skin”, I knew I would love this album. First of all, the band has a fiddle player, and I am a sucker for rock bands with fiddles (Geraldine Fibbers, Gogol Bordello, etc). Secondly, the lyrics were deeply disturbing in a Nick Cave kind of way, but darker and more twisted. The songwriter must be bi-polar and knows his macabre US history, as proven by the song "Fire at Peshtigo".I’m sure I’ll be doing a print article on these guys, so I won’t get too involved here. But to describe them, imagine the lead singer from Interpol in front of the gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello, or if you added a fiddle to Modest Mouse and took away Isaac Brock’s lisp.
After hearing this album, I can forgive Kemado Records for that whole “The Sword” misunderstanding. And after all, if it wasn’t for “The Sword”, I would have never have run across my favorite unsigned band (Kemado...sign these guys!), Toko-Ri Get High. (Read about them at my website).
UPDATE: After writing this, I did a youtube search for O'Death and found a shaky handheld recording of an acoustic version of "Busted Old Church". It's worth a look. These guys must be amazing live. Check it out:
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