Band:	Wayfarer
Album:	American Gothic
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	October 2023

01. The Thousand Tombs Of Western Promise
02. The Cattle Thief
03. Reaper On The Oilfields
04. To Enter My House Justified
05. A High Plains Eulogy
06. 1934
07. Black Plumes Over God's Country
08. False Constellation
09. Night Shift [CD bonus]

In the years since the release of World’s Blood, the ‘Western black metal’ microgenre has begun to grow just a tad; Untamed Land and Dark Watcher have produced solid material, and Duelist have even titled an album Spaghetti Western Black Metal. However, you can trust the masters to remind the rest what the gold standard is for this niche.

It’s interesting to look band on Wayfarer's decade of existence and return to their humble origins; Children Of The Iron Age was a very respectable atmo-black release, but it was only really with third album World’s Blood in 2018 that they began to meaningfully integrate the Western sounds into their music and distinguish themselves from the pack. A Romance With Violence built upon and refined everything good from World’s Blood, resulting in one of the standout black metal releases of the 2020s thus far. In the three years since, the band’s three remaining founding members have been busy with other projects, releasing the debut albums of both Stormkeep and Lykotonon, but while Stormkeep rightly earned a lot of attention with Tales Of Othertime, Wayfarer is where Shane McCarthy and co. shine at their brightest, and they’ve pushed the Western metal concept even further with American Gothic.

The term ‘Western metal’ is starting to feel a bit more apt, as it’s hard to say that American Gothic is confined to black metal. Certainly, their own twangy interpretation of black metal is the predominant metallic genre on this album, but even discounting the non-metal cuts such as “Reaper On The Oilfields” and “A High Plains Eulogy”, the metal portions of songs such as “To Enter My House Justified” and “False Constellations” have some measure of variety to them. Nevertheless, on top of McCarthy’s sinister rasps, there’s a solid dollop of cold-edged tremolo riffs, blasts and double bass stampedes to get stuck into.

From a structural standpoint, American Gothic is slightly frontloaded, opening with its two longest songs before serving up several more bitesize efforts. The first of these long ‘uns, “The Thousand Tombs Of Western Promise”, is very much in line with what listeners familiar with the previous two albums will expect: opening slide guitar twang, followed by warmly textured mid-tempo blackened metal with strong riffs, guitar leads and semi-regular surges in speed. However, it is likely that “The Cattle Thief” is more likely to draw one’s attention on first playthroughs; while initially following the band’s established formula, a sharp turn into synth-laden doom midway through offers something quite new and exciting, and the slack clean-sung closing minutes round off the song in compelling fashion.

The softer ending serves as a good platform for Wayfarer’s subsequent explorations of more melodic sounds. “Reaper On The Outfields” is probably the more ‘typical’ light song, dominated by a repeated Western slide guitar motif, and obscured by a hazy, faded production that builds distance between the listener and the muffled singer; it’s a cool song, but one that arguably overstays its welcome by a minute or two. “A High Plains Eulogy” is a bit more unexpected; the organ sounds that open it instantly add a touch of melancholy that the song subsequently sustains, with sad guitars and subdued singing. There’s a subtle beauty to this song that I’m not quite sure ever occurred on A Romance With Violence.

Still, there’s plenty more metal left in Wayfarer’s locker, starting with the inherently cool “To Enter My House Justified”; that opening lick just carries so much swagger, and while the more measured grooves do alternate with some of the album’s most extreme sequences, they never lose that intrinsic appeal. “Black Plumes Over God’s Country” is a bit more portentous, striding along in steady, stoic fashion and occasionally lapsing into softer segments of mournful self-reflection. The build in the latter stages of this song and the impassioned guitar solo are very strong, but arguably the pick of the bunch on American Gothic as a whole is closing track “False Constellations”. This song features an excellent return of saloon-style piano, which delivers a fantastic recurring motif that trades off very satisfyingly with the guitar twangs.

I very much like the latest step forward in terms of musical evolution that Wayfarer have taken with American Gothic; however, I’m disinclined to consider it their best album yet. While I consider it a strong album overall, I do think it does have occasional tendencies to lose momentum, with the excessive repetition in “Reaper On The Outfields” the most obvious culprit. Additionally, while the likes of “The Cattle Thief” and “False Constellation” are powerful additions to their catalogue, I don’t think anything here matches the peaks of A Romance In Violence, the likes of “Vaudeville” and “The Crimson Rider”. In general, though, I’ve just found myself slightly more measured in both my initial and subsequent reactions to American Gothic when compared with A Romance In Violence, a record I fell in love with on first listen and continue to hold in incredibly high regard.

However, ‘not quite as good as a landmark release’ should not be considered a rebuke of the album's virtues; American Gothic is still among the best albums released in 2023, and has enough new ideas to demonstrate that Wayfarer are still actively exploring the confines of the Western metal concept.