Prayer of Death sat squarely on my desk for a week before I got the guts to listen to it. What was I avoiding? Was I afraid? The CD sat there in plain sight for days; the cover a haunting, hazy psychedelic collage built around a jewel-crowned Guy Blakeslee aka Entrance. Eyes set ahead, empty and still, lying in state like a dead king. I was avoiding it, like I was avoiding death itself, but I wanted to do nothing more than to kill the lights, get some candles going and listen to it.
Personifying death is something people across all cultures have done from time immemorial. When the Grim Reaper turns up at the door and creakily points a finger to your heart, what are you to do? Do you invite him in? Are you ready to accept the fate he has brought you? In "Grim Reaper's Blues," the wandering Baltimorean sings "that olde grim reaper, he's a friend of mine / 24 years old and I don't mind dyin'… honey don't you wanna go?"
The album is mostly about being ready to die — accepting the loneliness of death, taking the burdens with the beauty in life, and bearing witness to love, wickedness and despair. Prayer of Death is a frightening, intoxicating spiritual mess of dark bluesy drama.
Most notable are the two lead tracks — the disarmingly balls-out, in-the-red maelstrom of "Grim Reaper Blues" and "Silence of a Crowded Train". The latter features a killer Moroccan-type violin line by co-conspirator, bassist, violinist and arranger Paz Lenchantin (A Perfect Circle, Zwan, Queens of the Stone Age, Papa M, etc.). She has a strong hand in the production of this album, her bass-lines are pure aces, and she's co-credited, along with Blakeslee, with "album concept". It's so amped sounding and viciously raw, I felt charged by its strange familiarity.
What follows is the swirling trashy electric sitar drone of "Requiem for Sandy Bull (R.I.P.)", a loose instrumental which owes as much to its woozy late-night fucked-up textures as to the unique legacy of its namesake.
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1 - Connie Phillips
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