Wolves Hollow Magazine

Phantom of the Black Hills
“Ghosts” cd
RBR 712

What do you get when you cross the rougher side of Hank Williams III with Samhain’s classic debut “Initium”? You get “Ghosts”, the first album from the black as pitch two-man cowpunk nightmare known as Phantom Of The Black Hills. Consisting of members the Phantom and Popeye, POTBH is all venom, misery, blood and dust. A devil’s concoction of country music instrumentation (banjo, steel guitar and fiddle) and punk rock rage and song structures, “Ghosts” is one of the most ambitious and original records I’ve heard in some time, coming across like the bizarre lost soundtrack to the film There Will Be Blood, and it succeeds on every level. If Glenn Danzig and Al Jourgensen stayed up all night listening to old Porter Wagoner and Hank Sr. records and drinking homemade corn liquor, then decided to make an album together, it still wouldn’t come close to the bleak, inventive darkness of this eleven-track hatework. Can’t recommend it enough.

Jon Stephens
Wolves Hollow