Four great songs to lament the death of the old world and illuminate the apocalyptic times before us. Taking inspiration from the great musical Magi of the past like Anton LaVey, Gurdjieff, Pythagoras and Zarathustra, Asmodeus X presents "Black Fire". Some may say this is stylistic change for Asmodeus X due to the more Folk sound and approach even including some Western influences and composed on purely acoustic instrumentation. The band claims it is more like a Remanifestation of their essence, reclaiming the acoustic elements from "Wolf Age" and "Morningstar" and reborn with new vigor and enthusiasm.
01. Farewell to the West
02. The Bright Ones (Slips Away Edit)
03. Riding Back from Hell
04. Black Fire
All songs recorded between 2019 – 2020 at the Blue Room Studio on the South Side of Houston, Texas.
Album cover art by Komodokat
Asmodeus X is:
Paul Fredric – Vox, Acoustic Guitar - Rhythm
Vasquez – Vox, Acoustic Guitar – Lead
Joel 313 – Vox, Acoustic Bass
Produced by Paul Fredric
Riding Back From Hell
After the release of Dark Ides of Summer in July 2018, we had a little break. It wasn’t so much voluntary as necessary, as we all found life pulling us in different directions at the time, and I found myself ‘on the road’ pursuing other projects for about a year. One result of this was I started working on music by myself in an effort to stay engaged, and the best tool for this is the good old acoustic guitar. I busted out my Ovation, the same one I’d used for recording the acoustic tracks on Wolf Age (White Mountains) and on Morningstar (Morningstar Visionary Mix). Some people don’t know this but most of Wolf Age was born out of Gary Lesikar (Frank Faust) and me sitting around jamming on our acoustics with copious amount of ‘Ice-Cold Budweiser’ and yes a few times it was even around a campfire.
[This is the part in the narrative where, for the sake of those who have not followed Asmo since the beginning, I explain about how we were always a mostly electronic band ranging from Darkwave to Industrial to EBM.]
Anyhow, I thought about those nights a lot as I sat around jamming by myself into the wee hours of Saturday night. The ghost of Gary always makes me wonder how things might have gone had he lived, and so maybe a part of me thought I could just pick up where we left off. A lot of the old Asmo songs even up into Sanctuary were originally composed on acoustic, so they were easy to revive. As I started to run out of old Asmo songs, I began a deep-dive into traditional Folkish, Western and Country music. I studied the greats like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard – Gary had turned me on to all of these in back in the day but only now could I grok it, only after so much chaos and ramblin’. I studied the innovators like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and then of course the dark lords of my generation like Death In June and the Marionettes. Then somewhere out of all this a few new songs started to emerge.
When the band’s schedules started to come back around and we re-assumed our weekly Thursday night ‘clubhouse’ meetings at 313’s studio on the Southside of Houston, I brought along my acoustic to show the guys the new songs I was working on, and what can I say…the guitar just never went away. It felt like the ghost of all the people who had been in and out of the group over the years was being evoked – all the Gary’s, Brad’s, Allison Skott’s, Tigs and Kali’s. Suddenly it seemed pretty miraculous that the three of us – Joel, Vas, and Paul – were even still alive let alone still standing around jamming together. It really did feel like we were Riding Back from Hell. We spent maybe six months jamming the songs unplugged before we even bothered to pull out the good ole Dr. Rhythm drum machine.
We discovered a lot of those old Asmo Songs – like The Bright Ones – lend themselves really well to acoustic versions, and that in so doing new levels of depth and warmth are revealed in them. The albums-worth of new songs we were doing all had a pretty apocalyptic feel, maybe we had a premonition of the Coronapocalypse that was just around the corner, or maybe we were always just that Apocalyptic, but when the pandemic hit we knew it was time get some of these tracks out there to mark the occasion.
So here it is – the Black Fire EP. If it all goes well it will be followed up by a full length album will be called maybe Riding Back from Hell or maybe Farewell to the West, who knows?
But for now here’s four great songs to lament the death of the older world and the illuminate the apocalyptic times before us. If you’ve followed us this far, we think you’ll appreciate the evolutionary change, which is as much a reiteration of our late-90’s neo-folk roots, as it is a natural process of maturation. But you have to remember – that old world is dead. Fortunately for you, these tunes are all perfect for humming while bidding a fond farewell to The West.
~Paul Fredric
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Available At:
Houston Chronicle
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