Blitzen Trapper’s Hauntingly Exquisite Latest

Destroyer of the Void, the fifth album from the dynamic Portland-based Blitzen Trapper is more than an album; it is an embodiment of the human experience. This band manages to take obvious influences from past greats and make something unique.

It takes a certain skill to build on greatness while maintaining originality, and that is exactly what these six talented musicians have done with their fourth full length album. Front man Eric Earley’s superb poetic lyrics flow over an array of instruments ranging from piano to harmonica to rusty guitar. If 2008’s Furr proved that Blitzen Trapper was one of the best modern bands at capturing the essence of the past while still being forward thinking and inventive, Destroyer has set it in stone.

Destroyer of the Void opens with the title track, a Bohemian Rhapsody-esque epic, that can best be described as a journey; one which whisks the listener through assorted genres, decades, and feelings like a dream.  “The Man Who Would Speak True” relies on hauntingly exquisite poetic prose, an unquestionable specialty of this band, a talent which can’t help but transport the unsuspecting listener to another time and place, alien, yet so familiar.

Sorrowful yet lovely, depressing yet uplifting, traditional yet progressive, this album is a mish mosh of juxtapositions. Destroyer of the Void is an experience in itself. In these twelve songs, Blitzen Trapper captures the pain and sadness, yet undeniable beauty that is the prevailing nature of the fragile human spirit. –Angie Roach

http://www.blitzentrapper.net/

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