It’s in the fringes and adjacent realms of metal that sometimes to most interesting acts can be found even if they can remain quite amorphous, hard to pin down, or even just outright weird by all intents and purposes. There’s something freeing about being in such a realm, though. A place where you can do whatever you please without worry of genre boundaries or stylistic tendencies to the point that you are able to sprawl out in as many directions as you want and grasp ahold of whatever concepts or approaches that come to your mind. When I first heard the blackened Americana from Manos Six and the Muddy Devil three years ago, I knew that something special was forming, yet it’s with their newest effort that the act made a hell of a left turn that I wasn’t expecting.

A little shift in direction here or there can make for a hell of a difference if it’s all crafted by a name that knows precisely how to attack such a thing and then capitalize on the opportunity that they’ve crafted for themselves. Given their approach to occultic Americana that took more than a few cues from the world of black metal that had loads of melody, menace, and nastiness to call its own in the Deep South of America, I would have figured that this act would have doubled down on the concept in a relatively straightforward manner whenever they released new material. However, throughout the four tracks of “When Skies are Grey”, it becomes evident that Manos Six and the Muddy Devil sought to diversify their sound while sticking true to their themes of paradoxical belief, death, and menace that permeates a lot of media that find themselves in this backdrop, but there’s something about how it’s done here that feels quite magnetic. Admittedly a little dry but never once pulling its punches as “When Skies are Grey” can become as unsettling and disturbing as it can be intoxicating and compelling for the sense of melody that it does manage to bring to the table amongst the menace, terror, and underlying dread that makes for the foundation of what this EP is constantly pulling from. As the EP progresses, so too does that modicum of that old-fashioned Southern hospitality that finds itself overshadowed by the sheer presence that Manos Six and the Muddy Devil brings to the table from which there is no real escape. Their shadow is dense, dark, and simply unavoidable yet nonetheless compelling and all too tempting to peer into.

By no means is it a stretch to say that there’s always been something alluring about dark Americana done in such a way that really gets under the skin and manages to seethe in all of its malevolence, and it should go without saying that Manos Six and the Muddy Devil are clearly adept at delivering that concept, yet they refuse to play by the rules in any form. Loaded with atmosphere and undeniable menace that can feel as dense as it is unyielding in its onslaught, “When Skies are Grey” holds a lot more under its surface than one would expect from such a seemingly unassuming piece.

LISTEN to “When Skies are Grey” on Bandcamp here.

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