Death To Dead Wolves
CD released by Jewelled Antler. Six settings of William Everson poems.

October Tragedy
Do Not Brood For Long
Red Sky At Morning
These Are The Ravens
Fog Days
A Canticle To The Waterbirds

Reviews

Aversionline
July 2004
Rating: 7/10
This is among the select few professionally pressed releases from Dead Raven Choir's extensive discography, and it looks beautiful! There's almost no text on the outside of the package, and in fact aside from the tracklist in the booklet there's scarce text anywhere. Just bleak images of mountainous landscapes, trees, and sheep in a fog-laden field. Very nice, indeed. And in fact this is also one of Smolken's finest offerings to date: A very consistent set of sparse, obscure, bleak folk compositions with all lyrical content borrowed from poet William Everson. Most all of the instrumentation is stringed (a bit of guitar, but mostly bass, troll cittern, tenor banjo, and mandolin), and it's not your standard performance. The tracks revolve around generally quiet, spacious plucking and string scraping with varying levels of whispered/hissed vocals. Variations in the playing are the key source of dynamics herein, as the plucking sways from violently aggressive to faint executions, and the vocals can be quite acerbic in tone. The massive 23+ minute "A Canticle to the Waterbirds" (a traditional arrangement) is louder and users piano in a similar, though slightly more openly melodic, manner along with some drone-like qualities ­ though the majority of the tracks run fewer than three minutes by comparison! A few tracks even use distortion, most obviously in "October Tragedy", whereas the grating "These Are the Ravens" creates feedback type of effects acoustically (very nice). Usually I have a bit of a problem with the vocal deliver as it can be quite dramatic, but things are slightly more restrained on this release, and the recording is also far more polished than usual, which also plays a role in helping the vocals feel at home. Everything is very clear and actually quite lush, so this time out it's the performance that harnesses most of the bite, rather than Smolken's oft employed raw, minimal production values. I was really quite surprised to find how smooth and flowing this set of songs is, and I enjoy that immensely. All in all this is quite a progression for the project. It's certainly not a vast departure from the previous work that I've heard, but there is an exemplification of evident growth, and now more than ever I look forward to hearing future work from this curious artist. Someone certainly needs to recognize some of these efforts with a vinyl release!
Foxy Digitalis
May 17, 2004
Rating: 8/10
Dead Raven Choir is mainly the endeavor of one Smolken the digger, a Polish immigrant living in Texas. "Death to Dead Wolves" is his second non-CD-R release and is my favorite Dead Raven Choir album yet. After messing around in harsher, noisier tones on two recent releases ("Sturmfuckinglieder" on Battlecruiser and "Sevenfold Songs of Death" on Pink Skulls), this album is back to the lifeless, acoustic, black metal-tinged recordings most of us know and love. I've recently learned that if an album title ends in "Wolves," then it is a "quiet" album. Except for the fact that there's nothing quiet about Dead Raven Choir other than volume; the intensity in these tracks is turned up to 50. This is music with all the light removed; it's dark and desolate and is not a place you'd dream of venturing alone.
"Death to Dead Wolves" is also the first non-CD-R release from the Jewelled Antler imprint, and Dead Raven Choir is the perfect place to start. This is a release that was commissioned by label heads/free-folk gods Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse. Smolken often takes somewhat obscure poetry and puts it to music, and this is the case here. Donaldson and Chasse asked him to tackle select poems by one of their favorite poets, William Everson. The results are stunning in their desolation as Smolken makes Everson's words his own. Instrumentation is sparse; acoustic guitars rise from smoke like dead trees reaching toward a black sun on the banks of the River Styx. But the real stamp of Dead Raven Choir authenticity, as always, comes in the vocals. I'd say the vocals are over-the-top, but that'd be selling them short. He sings every song as if he's on stage in front of thousands. This is drama like you've never heard it before.
Whispering the lines that open "Red Sky at Morning," Smolken comes off as a hooded demon tempting your better judgment by offering up all your worldly desires at the low, low cost of your soul. His voice is so full of contempt, it's spine chilling. As an acoustic guitar is rapidly strummed at random intervals, I feel like the entire world is falling down in ashes and flame around me. Everson's words come off as those from an angry God who has so much disdain for the world he has created, he sees destroying it as the only possible solution. This is the stuff of horror movies, and Smolken is the perfect narrator.
Most of these tracks are similar in approach and delivery, but they do not sound repetitious. Each is its own worst nightmare. While they all evoke similar imagery, the subtle differences keep them fresh. "Fog Days" uses a fast-picked acoustic guitar that makes me think of a person being stretched to their limit on a rack. It's delightfully twisted, and only Smolken could pull this off so perfectly. It's also amazing to me that something so dark and harsh could be created with mostly just an acoustic guitar and vocals. This is not the kind of music anyone would think of when using the phrase "singer/songwriter." Smolken is much more than that. He is a performer. He is an artist.
The most interesting piece here, though, is the 23-minute rendition of Everson's best known and most dissected poem, "A Canticle to the Waterbirds." I was caught completely off guard when a piano was used in place of an acoustic guitar. The birds in "A Canticle..." are mediators between humans and God. To hear Smolken play in such a context is impressive; I consider this one of his best pieces. This track is so affecting because of the great use of silence. Interspersed between the sparse notes on the piano, there is great space. "A Canticle to the Waterbirds" shows us that there is a great deal to be learned from these birds, and in these quiet moments, we are left to reflect on Everson's words. It's executed brilliantly.
Dead Raven Choir has become one of my favorite projects in the past year. Smolken is as unique and interesting an artist as there is in independent music, and his art reflects that. "Death to Dead Wolves" is his finest outing yet, and he only gets better with each subsequent release. There is something going on here that transcends music. I feel like I can cleanse my own demons through these jagged, twisted fables. Exhume any skeletons you've been hiding and offer them up to Dead Raven Choir. Let the wolves consume them until you are free.

Aquarius Records
May 21, 2004
Oooh. That cover photo of the fog, sheep and trees is nice. A misty meadow for your imagination to wander in as you listen to this, which happens to be the debut "real cd" release from the previously cd-r only label Jewelled Antler. For the occasion, they've chosen an artist from outside their SF-based "collective", their friend Smolken's Dead Raven Choir. (A bit like picking Merzbow, that, since he's so prolific, but still a good choice quality-wise.) Smolken is the guy who has discovered the secret commonality between anguished black metal and emotional folk-minimalism (such as that of Japanese troubadours like Kan Mikami). Some of his releases tend towards the noise and distortion of black metal, others towards the broken Jandekian folk of one man and a guitar. Death To Dead Wolves is yet another haunting/haunted DRC album on the sparser side of that spectrum. If you're already a fan, go ahead and get this one, it's good. If not, perhaps some explanation is in order. Smolken's modus operandi on this disc is to intone poetry (all lyrics here are from the works of 20th century American poet and sometime monk, William Everson) in a heavy Polish accent, sounding rather like a B-movie vampire. Smolken's sinister stage-whisper melds with piano and guitar, all notes struck stark and creepy, with drones and silence both adding to the eerie mix. Electric guitar is utilized, but the playing is in his usual damaged folk style. The final song, "A Canticle To The Waterbirds" is 23 minutes long, the music loosely based on a traditional folk melody. An epic ending to an evocative disc.
the Broken Face
November 8, 2004
My feelings about Dead Raven Choir’s barbaric psych-folk have always been somewhat mixed but if there is one release that despite its fractured, damaged and fucked up structures really works as a whole it got to be this one for the highly-esteemed Jewelled Antler label. Imagine a metal fan finding his way to the wonderful world of bleak free folk and this is what it might sound like. The music is at times disturbingly raw and overly melodramatic, but at other occasions beautifully mysterious and pleasantly loose. Poland born (now living in Texas) Smolken AKA Dead Raven Choir walks the the thin line where humor, pretention and shadowy forest imagery come to meet and although it’s hardly for everyone I still find myself returning to this one time after time.