I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but one night I stumbled upon a relatively unknown cluster of Pacific deep-northwest metal bands. They were mostly average in terms of musicianship and appeal, but one act with a couple of singles from a forthcoming album stood above the pack. This band was Bushwhacker, and their since-fully released third album A Fistful of Poison is one of the most creative and polished offerings to come out of any metal scene in recent memory. To call this album “underrated” would be an understatement as big as the Montana sky; at the time of publication, this remarkable work has a paltry eighteen Bandcamp supporters. Let me do my best to convince you, dear reader, to increment that number.

With cover art and logo that look lifted right off the cover of a Louis L’Amour or Longarm novel (stuff I remember my dad reading from my childhood, and certainly not something I expected to reference in a metal review), Bushwhacker subvert any surface expectations by blending their frontier imagery with Egyptian mythology (‽) and a sludgy, psychedelic, post-thrash musical paradigm. The album’s dramatic narrative—which should be the listener’s central focus with the music playing a supporting role—unfolds with a combination of audio-drama vignettes and lyrical presentation. Without the script available, it’s a little tricky to piece together the full story, particularly in terms of the characters and their roles, but I think I have a handle on the most important parts.

I want to spend more time tracing the arc of the storyline, so let’s get a broad characterization of the music out of the way and fill in a few details as we go. Bushwhacker blends Voivod’s riffy, off-kilter thrash with Nero di Marte’s urgent, swirling post-metal groove, with a bit of Blood Mountain-era Mastodon scattered in for good measure. Vocal and guitar duties are shared between Cavan Egan (as best I can tell, the brains of the operation) and Geoff Woods, with Rory O’Brien on bass and vocals and Sean Komaromi pounding the drum kit. The vocals are diverse within a limited space, namely a gruff, mid-register scream that has the flexibility to lean more melodic or more aggressive as the music dictates. The band rarely flashes high-calibre technical chops and avoids overly fast tempo, reserving the guitar solos, double bass and blast beats for key junctures within the storyline. It’s the careful composition and meticulous crafting of each song around the structure of the narrative that makes this album a masterpiece. (This is a quality I admire, and aspire to in my own songwriting as someone with very limited raw proficiency on my instruments.) The production also adds a brilliant layer of polish, most notably the powerful and crisp drums, but also the way subtle synths are balanced beneath stacks of guitars. With this finish, even an average musical performance would sound impressive, and since Bushwhacker comfortably sits a couple of notches above average, the production provides a wonderful framework for their creative aptitudes.

The story begins with a “Prologue”, as a gang of outlaws gather around a campfire to induct Colt (played by Egan) into their bandit cult. We quickly come to understand that this group worships the ancient Egyptian god Sobek through the use of a hallucinogenic plant squeezed into cuts in the palm of the hand. After Mr. Doolin leads Colt in the induction ritual, multilayered acoustic guitar and, eventually, harmonica set the stage for a deeper dive into the story. The first proper track, “… And They Rode West”, shows off the band’s psychedelic stylings (opening with a \(\frac{5}{8}\)-over-\(\frac{4}{4}\) polyrhythm) and features another vignette describing a Colt-led robbery before we finally get a taste of the roaring vocal delivery that carries the album’s actual lyrics. We only get two short verses in this track before it gives way to a second vignette, “The Saloon”. The bandits’ robbery was a success, as Colt and his crew plop down a suspiciously hefty purse to procure drinks. The bartender, Herschel, recognizes the ashen visages and slashed palms of the crew and identifies them as Sobek worshippers. However, he surprises Colt by not resisting their presence, but rather offering a crucial tip: pointing them westward, in the direction of a tribe of more ancient practitioners of the crocodile god’s cult, a group devoted to human sacrifice and the cultivation of the sacred plant, hawthoria (sic, perhaps a misspelling of the haworthia plant).

Energized by this information, Colt begins to lead the group on this frontier journey in “Knives and Teeth”, but meets treacherous obstacles in “The River Black”: first, the deathly heat and thirst of the deserted wilderness, then the raging tempest of the titular river. The music here plods along at first, reflecting the desperate anguish of the crew, but ramps up in intensity as they give in to their hallucinogen addiction once more, even flourishing with some double bass and blasts. Horses and men alike wither and perish in this desolate land, and in the subsequent vignette, “A Bone of Contention”, an unspecified crew member (I think named Boone, based on the sequencing of characters and the fact that he states Dallas is dead) laments their losses, but Colt’s fanatical and increasingly alarming obsession with locating the cult does not waver. He assures Boone that they are close, as he sees a temple and hears drumming in the distance . . . but Boone doesn’t seem to concur. In the next pair of songs, Colt comes to realize—or at least state clearly for the listeners—that Boone will be the sacrifice he offers to Sobek, preparing himself in “Bridges Burn” and finally executing the deed in album standout “Brother in Blood”. This latter track features a pristine display of swirling, key-shifting, psychedelic post-metal with some of the album’s catchiest and most memorable vocal parts (“Know this…” and “As an advocate of the afterlife…”). Colt assures Boone that his death will result in immortality for both of them. Arriving at the temple, Colt presses on to “Enter the Wabet”, a purification chamber where he gruesomely dismembers his comrade in the sight of the cultists and their priest, carefully performing the rites to offer the sacrifice so that his heart may be judged by the Great Ennead.

But in “The Weighing of the Heart”, the curtain drops. Colt comes down from his hallucinogenic high and, in his lucidity, finds himself not in a temple surrounded by fellow Sobek fanatics, but rather in a cave surrounded by the decimated body of his attempted sacrifice. Boone, it turns out, was right; there was no temple, no pounding drums, no cult, no purpose to their insane and brutal frontier traversal. Colt is overcome with grief when he realizes this truth, and lacerates his body in order to expend all the rest of his hawthoria (sic) stash, filling his bloodstream with the psychotropic substance. As the poison takes hold, he realizes that the barkeep had misled them intentionally, sending them on a wild goose chase; Colt vows vengeance and storms eastward, back toward the bandits’ former home. However, as he attempts to ford the River Black once more, a serpentine emissary of Sobek (either symbolic or actual) grips his leg and pulls him into the rushing depths of the river. His final hallucination sees his heart weighed on the scale before Anubis and Ma’at and—given his thievery, addiction, and murderous behaviour—judged unworthy of eternity among the gods. Thus concludes the odyssey of Colt, and in the final vignette, “Offhand Remarks”, Wesley Young and the bartender Herschel discover his lifeless body washed up along the riverbank. Herschel states that the country is better off without the trouble of Colt and his gang, and instructs Wesley to toss his body back in the river where it belongs: “just another dead junkie.” The final instrumental track, “To the Stars”, puts a neat bow on the saga, as \(\frac{6}{8}\) arpeggi carry the dead to their final resting place.

The last bit of praise I can heap on this band has to do with their incredible attention to detail and craftsmanship when it comes to the physical packaging. The bandcamp pics offer just a small taste, but it appears that the inset is lovingly rendered as a vintage newspaper, and includes not only the lyrics, but pictures and mock advertisements to add a layer of immersion to the experience. Bushwhacker had a vibrant vision for A Fistful of Poison, and they cut no corners in bringing it to life. I cannot stress enough how creative, immersive, and worthwhile this album is. In its synthesis of western imagery and Egyptian mythology, it offers a storyline utterly unlike anything that’s come before it. Adding capable and captivating musicianship and songwriting, outstanding production, and eye-popping artwork and assets to this story results in a magnificent musical experience that should appeal to the vast majority of metal fans.