Jesus Is The Path To Heaven is a musical trio led by singer-songwriter Jordan Hoban alongside bandmates Thommy Underhill and Zach Jordan. A band name like that one leads me to expect music loaded with spiritual and emotional tension, and on their new single out today, the band delivers on the implied promise.
I don't know the full extent of Hoban's spiritual views, but the band's last record was called deadchrist, so there's that. He's called the band a vessel for processing religious trauma, and a press release for new album Power! suggests it explores "Hoban's personal experience of religion, politics, and the cultural history of the South East, exploring how the three bleed together."
On lead single "The Lord Has Bled A Line," the result of his rumination is a stark, spooky kind of Americana with a heavy metal soul. The band calls it "an invitation to the contrasts of the record. The lyrics begin personal, biographical, then turn conceptual, ushering in the violent language present on the record as a whole."
The most obvious reference point for this sort of apocalyptic folk music is David Eugene Edwards, patron saint (haha) of doom-laden Southern gothic Americana via his work with 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand. But despite the distinctively American, specifically Appalachian nature of Hoban's concerns, I'm also hearing echoes of Lankum's droning, haunted take on traditional Irish folk music. The way it builds also reminds me of the beautiful and terrifying title track from Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans, though this band leans much harder into the "terrifying" side.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "The Lord Has Bled A Line"
02 "Sweet Blood Of Christ"
03 "Bow And Bend"
04 "All Along The River"
05 "Little Lamb"
Power! is out 7/10.
