Chainsaw of Life

Hellwood isn't a band as such, it's the result of a recording project between Jim White and Johnny Dowd. Jim White I know lots about, over the past few years he has written and released several extraordinary albums. If there was a section in your local record shop headed "audiophile recordings country southern gothic" that's where you would find him. Johnny Dowd I've not come across before but lyrically they both plough the same furrow, and that happens to be one dark, deranged and damn strange furrow. A line in track eight " Thomas Dorsey" sums it up well " I sing songs of love and depravity, that's the only lyrics that come out of me" as befits any good practitioner of country god, Jesus and the devil crop up repeatedly. The music is hard, strange and stripped back to the point of brutality, check out the junkyard guitars on "Man in a Plaid Suit"

I am inclined to overuse the word dark, but this album is dark. It's dark and unrepentent, it's dark and drunken and it's dark and sacrilegious. This is music for drunks and sinners get out the Bourbon, stick "Chainsaw of life" in the CD player and frighten the family.