BAND OF THE WEEK: THE SAINT JAMES SOCIETY

As long as The Saint James Society continues to preach their gospel, we can’t imagine being anti-social.

There’s something unnerving about the approach of this Texas-based band and the hexes they land – something unnerving about the way their debut EP staggers forward so immediately, so confidently, so jarringly jittery and jubilant.

Their’s is the sound of bad, bad, black juju on the approach. The EP begins with what we hear as the ominous sound of boots crossing a wooden floor immediately giving way to the beat, the beat, the beat. The beat! The beat is constant and crushing, allowing the band the space to gather and plant the seeds of the future Society.

Download “Of Silver and Gold” by THE SAINT JAMES SOCIETY

Given the relative brevity of the EP, The Saint James Society’s sonic scripture is staggeringly well-defined and varied, as graceful as it is gargantuan. Sounding almost effortlessly intertwined around the aforementioned beat – the bewitching, bewildered vocals, the spiderweb-sticky bass, the guitars as efficient and deadly as a paid assassin – it’s as if the band had been waiting their entire lives to find their freaky, creepy and crafty tribe, and sing the songs of the Saint James‘ society. We were immediately drawn to these songs – these 21st century sick-southern dancing-death cult ditties sung by the light of the magical moon – not only for the echoes of the past that they contain, but for the way those echoes transform into a Society that is new, a Society that is now.

Forgiveness granted, then, if the EP’s four songs cause you to immediately peg this Society as being less warm and welcoming and more of a psychically-wartorn warning. Opening incantation “Reflections” holds a mirror up to our old friend, the cosmic void – placing the band and those listening “inside a sea that swells and twists and turns and warps our reflection,” Society singer Brandon Burkhart sounding at once joyful, disgusted and relieved by the predicament.

So Saint James sings and sins and snake-dances through the cresting tide of said void, all doom and gloom, demons and danger, menace and magick, alpha and omega, rock and roll. Save your prayers and sustain your spirit – Society rules.

“The greatest benefactor to society is not he who serves it by single acts, but whose general character is the manifestation of a higher life and spirit than pervades the mass.” – William E. Channing