Wayfarer - American Gothic
An autopsy of the American Dream
Continuing the pioneering journey set upon in their prior releases, Wayfarer’s American Gothic examines the death of the American Dream as it was seen through the eyes of hopeful settlers of the Wild West.
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Since their third album, World’s Blood, Wayfarer has put forth a unique brand of atmospheric black metal that draws upon sounds typical of Southwestern country music. While Wayfarer has always made a distinctly Western brand of black metal, the pioneering sound of World’s Blood brought forward a “trve” approach to American black metal by weaving extreme metal with American traditionalism. It achieves this on many layers: plucky acoustic guitar tones, a William Tell Overture-style cadence to the riffs, and lyrics telling of European settlers’ own bloodstained pioneering into the American West. With the reverence towards Native Americans held up next to the now-widespread tones of second-wave black metal, there’s a remarkable parallel to the Nordic tales woven by Wayfarer’s Scandinavian kin.
The follow-up, A Romance with Violence, continues the tales of westward expansion through the frame of the Gold Rush and its converse industrialization of the West. Romance cleverly parallaxes across the Gold Rush and film eras, telling stories of saloons, death-dealing riders, and thundering railroads. The capstone is placed in the final track, Vaudeville:
Behold the great picture show, the immortal dance
Our heroes are all killers - and it’s gold they romance
Given that the Western film is as old as American cinema itself, the critique of Americans romanticizing the violence of the Wild West carries deeply, where even dime-a-dozen Marvel movies pull on tropes born of Western films. Whether a smooth-talking paragon of justice or a morally-ambiguous antihero, the day is always saved with some good ol’ fashioned violence.
American Gothic continues the prior release’s retrospective on industrialization. However, where there were tales of crimson riders, prospectors, and railroads, there are now company men, oil-drillers, and factories. The epic figure the American Cowboy serves as in the American mythos finds no place in the cold reality of this new steel-driven world. They are barbarians in an orderly system - the American Goth. This message is accented by Aaron Horkey’s beautifully ornate Blackletter font adorning the cover, a style historically referred to as “Gothic”, a synonym for “barbaric”.
Of course, this isn’t a Western film or country album. While it’s easy to get wrapped up in the unique aesthetic spread across the past three albums, it would all be for naught if it were delivered in the wrong package. Wayfarer continues to bring forward spectacularly powerful black metal, with thundering kick pedal and perfunctory tremolo picking throughout. These typical moments carry with them the signature country-inspired riffing of Wayfarer’s past, in a manner more polished than ever. The first half of the tracklist keeps this pattern, with scattered minor reprieves into atmospheric country tones.
Akin to the prior album, the tone sharply veers introspective just after the halfway mark. The vocals retreat into a dreamlike reverb for longer stints; the instrumentation moves to a bouncy cadence delivered over circadian acoustic fretwork. The bluesy guitar is blended with spacey post-rock, creating a strong likeness to alternative country. Even if ignoring the underlying message, the music is incredibly pleasing to the ear. Of course, there are reprisals to the insanity we black metal fans so enjoy, but the transitions are executed with utmost elegance. Oftentimes, the acoustic tones will carry over the walls of sound, creating a transcendental tone that’s difficult to resist melting into.
When all is said-and-done, the distinct elements of the music blend into a perfectly cohesive sound unique to Wayfarer, even in the presence of contemporaries like Panopticon or Blackbraid.
American Gothic perfectly closes the arc set about by the prior two releases with a powerful swan song for the Wild West. Laced with remarks of a promise unfulfilled, the album paints a woeful portrait of a journey for gold that turned up only blood, iron, and oil. Likening the lost promise of the West to the death of the American Dream, Wayfarer’s latest carries with it a realization that could have - and maybe should have - stood a hundred years ago. It’s hard to imagine where the band goes from here, but I suppose we could say that about a lot these days. At least we have Wayfarer’s future work to look forward to.