King Dude - Fear REVIEW

          

         With a name like 'King Dude', it's hard to imagine dark folk maven TJ Cowgill being the least bit frightening. But, as his self-professed 'sister' Chelsea Wolfe has been managing, King Dude has been spinning his own brand of bizarre, eerie folk since 2010's Tonight's Special Death, and with his most recent outing, aptly titled Fear, Cowgill continues to purvey his trademark ominously soothing take on folk.
          For Cowgill, disturbing your audience isn't as simple as being outwardly terrifying like a metal band, but it's about the overall contrast set up between Cowgill's chilling lyrics about Lucifer, witches, etc. and his calming, Bob Dylan-esque acoustic guitar and low, calming voice. The result is similar to a creepy child in a horror movie - outwardly innocuous, but there is something fundamentally wrong with what it's doing. With Fear, however, this delicate equilibrium is almost completely overturned as King Dude abruptly switches directions.
          Fans of the band will instantly appreciate songs like 'Maria' and 'Bloody Mirror' as unchanged from previous King Dude outings. 'Lay Down in Bedlam' features the particularly haunting "The moon will love me all night long..." as Cowgill's guitar plunks discerningly happily behind him.That being said, the rest of the album veers unexpectedly towards a far more rock-ish direction, featuring the unthinkable - an electric guitar. While 'Demon Caller Number 9' twists things up with a fiendish warp to Cowgill's voice, 'Fear is All You Know' features unclean vocals near the end as Cowgill lets his expertise with death metal band Book of Black Earth take the reigns for a hot second. Meanwhile, 'Bottomless Pit' could easily be a folk punk jam, with Cowgill adopting a Joe Strummer-like drawl.
          At first glance, however, this seems counter-intuitive given the record's title. For an album called Fear, it's severely lacking in the scares departmen, especially considering Cowgill went on record talking about how he wanted to make "geniunely horrfying music". However, as he goes on, it becomes clear Fear is dealing with a far more metaphysical kind of fear than the hair-rising satanic chills of before.

So I chose the next most obvious fear I felt everyone shared. And that is the fear felt during early adolescence. As we move away from our childhood towards our adulthood we (in a sense) watch helplessly from the confides of our own slowly deforming, prepubescent bodies as the "child-mind" is ripped away only (or buried deeply into our subconscious) only to be replaced by the cruel, maniacal, sex crazed "adult-mind" also known as the ultimate product of a civilized adult world reality.

          It's a genius idea that tackles one of the most powerful epiphanies people have in their adolescent years - no one actually knows what they're doing, and most are just rolling with the punches as life goes on. 'Empty House', the record's penultimate and longest song, bemoans the feeling of unpreparedness for major life events.
           Fear flows quite well, despite the band rapidly moving back-and-forth between traditional King Dude fare and the new rock direction the band debuts. For every sneering countrified rock song, there's a soulful, emotional ballad to counter it. It's a delightful balance that's deftly maintained as Fear plays itself through twelve songs, finishing on the deceptively light-hearted 'Watching Over You'. Most commendably, Fear doesn't drag its feet, honing in resolutely on where it wants each song to go. Every atmospheric break feels strictly necessary - not like a place filler. Whether or not Cowgill succeeded in writing some truly horrifying music is irrelevant - Fear is terrifyingly sad, happy, and angry, and this whole emotional gamut means the album is over far too soon.