REVIEW: Spiritworld - Helldorado

(Disclaimer: This review shall be composed in the vein of the late Cormac McCarthy)

You could feel it under your feet. This low and malignant tremor stirring in the bones of the world. A sound without cognate and so without reckoning but incorporeal as spirits benighted out of the dark. The earth itself contracts to the shattering feedback. The concussions of raw electric force wild where violent riffs herald to some nameless calamity. The vocals spread like sheet lightning accompanying the distortion. Where comes the riff? Who farriers the hoof of the beast? The breakdown arrives with clamour and flagrance as a great monster risen out of the earth with a form so great and so terrible as to burlesque the bestial mosher that hides in the Tartarus of every being.

They play on. They are playing, playing.

They say they will never die.

Welcome to the Spiritworld.

Ok, so maybe the rest of this review might not be conducted in the manner of McCarthy, but like the lyricism of the group, his echo will resonate throughout. Emerging from the sands of the Mojave, Spiritworld is the long-brewing peyote vision of Stu Folsom (or Justin Brundy, for those with no taste for stage names), a man who has spent decades fermenting his obsessions with the three H’s; hardcore, honky-tonk, and hellfire - until they bore something akin to an unholy sourdough starter. It began with Folsom, a metalcore outfit that flirted with western aesthetics before Spiritworld took the whole damn affair up several notches - first as a cow-punk curiosity, then as something far more sinister. With Pagan Rhythms in 2020 they emerged as a full-throttle, Old West-obsessed death machine, a gang of riff-slinging reprobates barrelling through a scorched-earth mythology where Satan himself rides resplendent over humanity. But by the time Deathwestern landed, the band had realised the rattlesnake within, shedding their skin to reveal the bastard offspring of Sergio Leone and Slayer, all rattling bones and Old Testament fire ‘n’ brimstone.

The writer’s first experience of these desperados was at London’s legendary Black Heart pub ahead of Deathwestern’s release in the dog days of 2022. No one in the room knew what kind of hell was about to be unleashed, four brightly-dressed cowboys emerged from the backroom and proceeded to hew the room asunder in an act not soon to be forgotten. It was different, the type of different that makes you follow a band and see what they can pull from their bag of tricks next and follow them like Barnum & Bailey’s troupe. Now we find ourselves in 2025, and the group is more formidable than ever. The six-shooter smokes, a body lies bleeding in the dust. It’s high noon. The meridian of the day. The intro to Helldorado echoes from the saloon doors.

‘Abilene Grime’ kicks things off like a bar fight that starts with a dirty look and ends with a man being tossed through a window. Beginning with a scream, a funky country guitar riff, and drums chugging along in a train line groove, then descending faster and faster - dragging the song into Spiritworld’s familiar domain. This one’s a pit-killer. The last thing some unfortunate soul will hear before being moshed into a fine pink mist. ‘No Vacancy In Heaven’ bursts out with Slayer-esque bravado and some brilliant call-and-response from Mr. Folsom, blaring out “IF THERE’S A HEAVEN THEN I DON’T WANNA KNOW” with all the panache of a preacher who has lost his faith in the big man upstairs and finds it again with the big iron on his hip. Featuring echoes of God Hates Us All and South Of Heaven, the die has truly been cast. ‘Western Stars & The Apocalypse’ is a slower jam, but comes and goes like a summer storm listing over a desert valley.  

‘Bird Song of Death’ is – dare we say – a jauntier tune than Spiritworld has ever released. This one would fit right into a hoedown at the barrelhouse, with a lively arrangement featuring acoustic strumming and clapping throughout. It harkens back to the cow-punk days, but also endeavours to become something more. But when ‘Prayer Lips’ slithers in - whispered vocals, a creeping melody, and, yes, a goddamn saxophone solo (realised by one RJ Demarco). What the hell is happening? Manifest destiny, it seems. Spiritworld isn’t content to stay in the crossover-thrash dust bowl, they’re peering into a stranger horizon. Just as you collapse, spent, ‘Waiting on the Reaper’ crashes in like a thunderclap and drags you back into the crossfire. ‘Oblivion’ pairs Zach Blair of Rise Against with Blackbraid’s Sgah’gahsowáh, an alliance of punk and Native American black metal screaming forth visions of ruin as two wayward ghosts of Old America howling across the indifferent plains.

After the spectral drift of ‘Cleansing’, ‘Stigmata Scars’ comes tumbling out of the gate, a merciless brawler crowned by a sacrilegious rallying cry: “STIGMATA SCARS ON MY HANDS!” It is gilded with a killer solo from Kreator’s Frederic Leclercq, with all the intensity you have come to expect. The experience ends with ‘Annihilism,’ a more traditional country tune with some extremely dark subject matter. It’s a hell of a thing to witness a band wade into unbroken territory, pushing their craft beyond blood and thunder. After the carnage, the bones have been rattled and the dust has settled, you can lean back, boots grazed and spirit-weary, and let the peculiar whimsy of it all wash over you like a great wave.

What Spiritworld is trying to do here is simple. Rather than a full-blown evolution of their sound, it appears that they are just stretching their muscles a bit. There’s still plenty of carnage for those who fiended for the death-metal dime-novel of Deathwestern, but the creeping country influence and the slower, twangier deviations will send the traditionalists running to the hills, howling that their hallowed crossover-thrash outfit has been contaminated by Kenny Rogers-isms. Let them run. If every band capitulated to those with metal tunnel-vision, the genre would be a drier than a canteen in the Mojave, doomed to churn out Storm of the Light’s Bane rewrites until the end of time. Helldorado is not just an uncharted endeavour for the band either, for it seems to continue on from the story that Folsom’s Godlessness anthology told in Deathwestern. The subject matter remains the same, with the brutality of the Old West and the musings of hell on earth continuing as before. Yet the delivery is an altered beast, and compared to the rough ‘n’ ruggedness of their last offering, Helldorado is a rustic phantasmagoria, a fever dream that refuses to be bound by the narrow constraints of its theme.

This is the inevitable crossroad all concept-driven bands must face - the great Darwinian aphorism: adapt or perish. Yet SpiritWorld seem unphased, schooled in blows and ready to take on the whole stinkin’ world, they approach with confidence, but do not appear to commit their whole head into the apple-bob just yet. It seems we have to stay tuned to see what mad stylings this great favourite can put out next. If you enjoy your slamming in the experimental vein of Employed to Serve and Rivers of Nihil, then Helldorado might just be up your alley, partner.

Folsom himself puts it best; “If that makes me an outcast or even more fringe than your average underground music act then that's okay. The stench of being genuine is beautiful.”

Score: 7/10

Helldorado will be released on March 21st 2025 via Century Media Records.

Words: Kiarash Golshani

Phots: Spiritworld