My obsession this year has been a return to my love of reading and books. I have always been a reader, but this year, fueled by science fiction, horror, and fantasy, I have been devouring books at twice the rate that I have in any given year over the last decade. These imaginative worlds and scenarios may often be written off by literati elites, but they invigorate the reader’s mind with philosophical and existential questions essential for navigating our crumbling world. In some cases these books may align with the BookTok style trends that, for better or worse, are at least driving book sales and hopefully getting people to read more. Mostly, however, I find myself gravitating to the weirder stories that I can find outside of that trending resource, vintage paperbacks from the ’70s and ‘8os. Fortunately, there is music for that exact level of obscurity and fandom, namely, the one-man blackened doom project: Blackstaff.
Washington’s Blackstaff has several EPs and singles already, focusing on themes and world building from the worlds of dark fantasy. Inspired by years of consuming fantasy books, playing tabletop role-playing games, and playing video games, multi-instrumentalist Dustin Cleary sees Blackstaff as an extension and exercise of those passions, crafting worlds and narratives that forge new fantasy realms while paying homage to some favorites. His latest, Drowner EP, will be out on Friday, July 10th, but you can stream it early right now! Here, roll for initiative.
Drowner takes slow, traditional sounding doom with lumbering riffs and throaty growls into black metal crescendos. There are interlude moments of spoken word and cleanly sung passages where the music shifts into atmospheric tone buoyed with found sounds, synthesizers, and keyboards. The result carries the world building and storytelling, centered around Will O’ The Wisps, (hag lights, seductive and eerie haunted luminescence over swamps and bogs), with a sinister, cinematic quality. Drowner is essentially one song that shifts into different parts as the looming terrors unfurl, but it is divided into three parts. ‘[…]track numbers were just a place to jump in and revisit parts of the story,‘ Cleary explains. So, if you want metal to soundtrack a story about being lured into a bog, harvested for parts, and reassembled into a “Flesh Golem”, this is the perfect record for you!
I mean, hell yeah, regenerative eco-serial killer swamp reassembles the flesh of its victims into a monstrous, mobile pillar of writhing, reeking body parts as a reminder that we are ultimately one flesh at the mercy of our planet? Sounds like an incredible weird fiction tale, but here you get heavy-ass songs to narrate the harrowing plot. This kicks ass! You can pre-order Drowner EP by Blackstaff via Bandcamp. Follow Blackstaff on Intagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
