"Valium Blues" comes on like a screaming runaway desert-train, driven by a propulsive rhythm by drummer Derek James, electric sitar, eastern violins, and Blakeslee (again) wailing and singing way out like, well, a man-shee.
Title track "Prayer of Death" drops things down a bit to major-chord campfire song territory. A nice centerpiece for the album, Blakeslee comes off as a bit of a songbird: "I want to die without no fear, how I want to die rejoicing", and he ends on a pretty, serpentine acoustic guitar coda.
The album closes with "Never Be Afraid!" Backed by a primal thwacking 'boom-crack' drumbeat, pounding bass, shitty crumbling-static electric guitars, clanging finger cymbals, and sleigh bells, it's a chain-gang group chant about courage, as would be performed at a psychedelic blood-orgy: "When you think about death every morning, don't you ever be afraid!" Just halfway through, the song implodes and settles into a disintegrating swirl of human barks, shouts, moans, and burns down to hissing ghostly embers; a lonely fadeout.
Entrance cites the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Delta blues Legend Charlie Patton, Timothy Leary, and Sandy Bull, among others, as prime inspirations for Prayer of Death. The record was initially self-released in June 2006 on Entrance Records and re-released nationally this fall on Tee Pee Records.
Sometimes you just know it when you hear it; after just the first listen, you get a gut feeling that Guy Blakeslee is someone who is going somewhere, perhaps far beyond Prayer of Death. But it's not for me to say if he's gotten there yet. For someone who exudes such a burning energy, you get the sense that he's not only living each day like it's his last, but living each day like it's his first.
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1 - Connie Phillips
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