ROSETTA WEST God of the Dead

Rosetta West’s God of the Dead doesn’t flirt with the blues it plunges into its grave, digs up the bones, and rattles them until they scream. This album is not some nostalgic nod to bar-band traditions or polite, sanitized covers. No, this is the sound of the blues possessed gnarled, ghost-bitten, and gleefully deranged. From the very first wail of “Boneyard Blues,” you’re dragged down a dirt road under a thunderstorm sky, where the crossroads never lead home and every song feels like it’s being performed on a porch built atop cursed soil.

Each track throbs with mischief and menace, conjuring a world where the guitars don’t just grow they snarl. Rosetta West’s frontman, Joseph Demagore, howls like a preacher in a town abandoned by God, his voice rising from the swamp with warnings and wicked laughter. “My Life” sounds like it was written with one foot in a juke joint and the other dangling over the edge of the abyss, while “Underground” leans into a molasses-thick groove that’s equal parts menace and mischief. These aren’t songs they’re stories chiseled into tombstones, warnings scrawled in ash.

What elevates God of the Dead beyond the graveyard gimmickry is how sharply composed and deeply textured it is. Sure, the fuzzed-out slide guitars and thudding rhythm section come across like a spectral freight train, but there’s craft in every snare hit, every tremolo shake, every eerie harmony. “Tao Teh King” unfurls into a mystic fever dream that’s equal parts voodoo ritual and acid trip, while “Dead of the Night” lets piano notes hover like cold breath on a mirror. The band’s commitment to weirdness isn’t some pose it’s a doctrine, upheld with startling precision.

And that’s the heart of it God of the Dead isn’t for the casual blues tourist. It’s for the misfits, the nightwalkers, the ones who hear howls in the wind and don’t look away. Rosetta West have tapped into something primal, dirty, and hypnotic a version of the blues that doesn’t smile politely but bares its teeth. This isn’t music made to entertain; it’s made to haunt. And for those willing to follow its trail of smoke and sulfur, it’s a damn fine place to lose yourself.

Written by Patrick