SPILL ALBUM PREMIERE: MORTAL PROPHETS – STOMP THE DEVIL

MORTAL PROPHETS – STOMP THE DEVIL

A SPILL EXCLUSIVE ALBUM PREMIERE

Tomorrow, The Mortal Prophets, a genre-fluid NYC musical project helmed by artist John Beckmann, share their highly anticipated debut EP entitled Stomp the Devil. Introduced with haunting singles such as “Stomp the Devil” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” this first release stays true to the claim that The Mortal Prophets is “an evolving band of genre-bending roustabouts [who] dig deep into America’s primal scream.” As the sky turns black, a sinister rainstorm slides across the horizon, and lightning cuts through its inky canvas like Death’s scythe — a not-so-subtle warning to step away from your speakers or succumb to Beckmann’s raw, ominous sound. With elements of experimental German electronica, pre-war blues, classic rock, and even Americana, Stomp the Devil has a little something for everyone, and it sets the scene for the group’s forthcoming debut LP, due later this year.

Said Beckmann of their brand new EP:

“With this first EP ‘Stomp The Devil’, I was looking for songs that had a timeless quality, that were deep and soul-wrenching, yet would be possibly open enough to a new interpretation. I distinctly remember the effect of the compilation album – American Primitive, Vol. 1: Raw Pre-War Gospel 1926-36. Had on me when I first heard it. It’s 77-minutes of gut-bucket, early gospel from the collections of Gayle Dean Wardlow and John Fahey. I wanted to tap into that early sound but create a new landscape that was a collision with German Electronica, with groups like Can, NEU!, Harmonia and Cluster, with a No-Wave electronic edge.

You can think about the project in this way: In his introduction to, The Raw and the Cooked (1964) French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss writes of his confidence that “certain categorical opposites drawn from everyday experience with the most basic sorts of things — e.g. ‘raw’ and ‘cooked,’ ‘fresh’ and ‘rotten,’ ‘moist’ and ‘parched,’ and others — can serve a people as conceptual tools for the formation of abstract notions and for combining these into propositions, or as the surrealist André Breton discovered the singular phrase that became foundational to the surrealist doctrine of objective chance: ‘as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.’

Stomp the Devil was produced by David Sisko, and features collaborations with Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart). It’s out tomorrow via all DSPs.

Mortal Prophets
Stomp The Devil
(Independent)
Release Date: July 7, 2022

Stomp The Devil Track Listing

1. Stomp The Devil
2. Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seenn
3. John The Revelator
4. Good Ole Way
5. Swing Low Sweet Chariot

Artist Links