You gotta love an album called Angels Of Destruction! that opens with a song called "Coughing Up Blood" that includes lines about stringing veins in trees and covering leaves with the red stuff and somehow isn't by Current 93. Okay, maybe you don't, but we do. It helps that Marah's sound is a pleasingly wordy, rooted Americana that coats the Philly-to-Brooklyn sextet's city-of-brotherly-love-swallowing, volcanic and cancerous apocalypse in jazzy piano and banjo tinged, jayhawking rock 'n' roll. Plus, it's not all end-of-the-world gore. As Van Zandt-y vocalist Dave Bielanko explains during the extensive narrative build, he's also a snowflake and a dove. Now that's multi-tasking.
[Photo by Hannah Toresson]
Marah - "Coughing Up Blood" (MP3)
We love the parlor-sounding "come back to the devil" opening -- where's that from? Hear more at MySpace, or get a full-album stream here. And if you're in the NYC area, you can mix blood and eggnog at the Bowery Ballroom on 12/8 for otheir third annual "Christmas Extravaganza."
Angels Of Destruction! is out 1/8 on Yep Roc. First 100 to pre-order get an autographed copy. Ready ... go.
