HAUNTED GEORGE "American Crow" LP

Weird George. Uncle Ya Ya. Skullface George. Graverobber Steven. He's known by many aliases. Haunted George, under his Christian name Steve Pallow, was a member of The Beguiled, Satan's Cheerleaders and The Necessary Evils in the '90s. Around the turn of the century, he retired from society to the Mojave Desert, where he spends his time building caskets, collecting exotic roadkill, making podcasts that have to be heard to be believed and creating nightmarish music. Exploring the one-man band format out of sheer necessity, he has recorded dozens of songs (many of which are abstract/noise recordings under the name Snuff Maximus) on a 1970s-era mono cassette recorder with a condenser mic. His compositions are creepy dirges that call to mind bits of American folklore, the extraterrestrial, the supernatural and murder. In other words, a bad trip. To date he has put out two albums of home recordings, Panther Howl and Pile o' Meat, on the Hook or Crook label, as well a handful of singles. About two years ago, Haunted George added ex-Necessary Evil Jimmy Hole to the "band" and started making more regular live appearances. His music remains sinister and unsettling, though it now has more swing and rocks harder. The decision was made to enter a real studio to put down his latest batch of songs with his new, expanded line-up. The result is American Crow: Fifteen tracks dealing with witches, decomposition, murder, death, donkeys, buzzards and roosters. In the hands of lesser talents, such subject matter would come off as kitchy or contrived, but Haunted George is the real deal. His music is a paranoid, altogether disturbed aural hallucination--each drum thud the lockstep of a weary fella who's lost himself in the twilight of the uninhabited desert, every space between beats a sparse landscape devoid of humanity, rife with fear and exaggerated panic. This is the only horror rock that matters. (In The Red)