TEAM LAST CALL

On record, Murder By Death singer Adam Turla sounds downright menacing, his deep baritone resonating with a Mark Lanegan-meets-Glenn Danzig growl of apocalyptic foreboding. Over swinging, shuffling, post-punk Americana, he flings phrases about infidelity, plunder, whoring, destruction, murder, gods, demons and utter desolation with a detached snarl, mercilessly scraping the bottom of the barrel for the starkest stories and bloodiest plot twists imagination allows.
But on the phone, he sounds really menacing. On a mid-January morning, he fumbles with the receiver and, after some under-the-breath grumbling, growls a curt “hello.” Irritation. Frustration. Were I a character in one of his dark, sprawling concept albums, he’d probably have one of my legs gnawed off by some foamy-mouthed hound of hell.
Fortunately, a few minutes and one funny story about a drinking game called Wizard Staff later, Turla is in a decidedly better mood.
“I’m generally a pretty happy person,” he insists. “I’m doing our band’s taxes right now, though, so when you called me I was wallowing in a sea of misery. I’ve been doing it for 30 hours. It’s killing me.”
Turla’s doing some last-minute office work before he and the rest of Murder By Death hit the road for a February tour that will feature, for the first time, the band playing the entirety of its newest album, Red of Tooth and Claw, and its 2003 storyline sequel, Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left Of Them?, in sequence, stringing together an epic adventure that involves burning towns, stabbings, adultery, divine interventions, lots of vomit, lots of piss, lots of whiskey and the shooting of the devil in a Mexican town. If Cormac McCarthy ever decided to write a Broadway musical, this might be the score.
Red of Tooth and Claw is far from an obvious prequel. In fact, many of the band’s (sometimes overzealous) fans are still not aware of it, which is something Turla intended.
“Who Will Survive … had a real cult thing going on – there were all sorts of stage productions and ballets, there’s a doctoral thesis written about it that someone sent me, just all sorts of weird, obsessive versions of it,” Turla laughs. “So when this album came out, I didn’t want to just pander by saying it was [a prequel] to get people to go out and buy it.”
Musically, Red of Tooth is a dark and sinister splattering of Americana ornamented with Sarah Balliet’s ominous, droning cello and careening rockabilly beats that throw the songs up on two wheels. With the exception of the borderline-optimistic closing track, “Spring Break 1899,” which Turla claims actually comes closest to his personal worldview, it’s a bleak and heavy listen. And even the last track isn’t exactly what you’d call happy.
“’Spring Break 1899’ is a really happy, ’50s-sounding, dreamy ballad, but the lyrics are about pissing and shitting yourself because you’re drunk and worthless,” Turla chuckles. “Happiness is not interesting.”
Turla may not use it as song fodder, but Murder By Death does have plenty to be cheery about, from its mountain of critical acclaim to the tours it’s landed alongside likeminded bands such as Against Me! and Lucero, as well as Turla’s longtime idols, The Pogues. But why dwell on the bright spots when there’s misery to be had?
“There have been years when we have zero money and eat beans for a month,” Turla laments. “Then again, … I think that making good material comes out of desperation, of necessity. So in that way, I appreciate being in this line of career and not ever having it be peaches and cream.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine