This dude... is the Motley Crue of moody folk music : like Vince Neil, TJ Cowgill puts a lot of glam and a whole bunch of glitter into his gimmick, which before folk just happened to be metal. No, this dude is not a native to the genre to which artists like Death In June and Blood Axis are ubiquitous. In fact, not unlike bro-stepper, Skrillex, he has migrated from the over saturated metal market and became a refugee of European underground music that had not yet found a mainstream American audience - a niche that is now exportable to, and exploitable in, the US by these handshakers.
With lent vocals by other brooding, yet boring sludge-goth rockers like Chelsea Wolfe and sharing stages with underground pioneers like Psychic TV, King Dude are expanding their notoriety and marketshare in the elitist goth genre of Neo Folk to less rooted and refined American listeners.
So it's no surprise then that that TJ C steps out of the deliberated darkness and puts his own likeness in the foreground -in an oddly contorted state -on the cover of the new album, essentially self-imposing and self-appointing himself as a reckoning face of the Neo Folk (despite Death In June's affinity for masks and ROME's vintage images of war and religion).
In deed, there doesn't seem to be an honest bone in the new album theatrically entitled, Songs Of Flesh & Blood. It's mostly made-up of formula : the brooding vocal tone, the strumming of guitar strings the smoldering battlefield of muted kettle drum beats and a melancholy bouquet of synthesizer melodies all wrapped up in a nice little package that the niche has performed already over the past few decades. But like a smart resume writer, TJG peppers his lyrical pros with a plentitude of keywords that are perhaps appealing to a young, impressionable and dark audience including the most obligatory ones (often phrases and themes in metal music); The Devil, Death, Dying and the Dark. However, in between these keywords and phrases are other words that also seem as insincere and superficial. Frankly, I felt like they didn't really mean any of it.
For some this album may sound haunting, however, I found it to be very hollow - in the pejorative sense (not in the sense the band would use the keyword to pander to their audience). And while the sound of Neo Folk does have a sensitivity and sophistication that garners a reputation for artists in the genre, without sincerity it might as well have a reputation of being silly.
Perhaps their means will find their end; getting laid, getting to travel Europe, getting to hob with the other knobs and getting paid. But we'd like to see them as a featured band in an upcoming episode of South Park's "Goth Kids", you know, like they do on the Simpsons.
