What's a nice boy from Boston doing here? Michael Horgrave starts with a melancholy base of Appalachian banjo and Mississippi acoustic guitar, and then he triples down. The results are darker and meaner than anything David Eugene Edwards (he of 16 Horsepower and much more) ever tried. That's probably because Edwards believes in the power of good over evil. I'm pretty sure Horgrave disagrees.

Ancine Death Hymns II: Book of Tribulation (self-released)

Musically, though, Horgrave dives straight into stark noise and gothic forms. These are not murder ballads; they're despair bombs. These roiling furies reveal only one message: Hope is lost.

Probably not the message we need these days, but take these paeans to pain as extreme blues, and they might serve as a pick me up. Not what I would advise after a couple of gummies, however, unless endless crying jags are cathartic for you.

But catharsis is not Ancine's game, either. Rather, these songs view life as a too-long sequence of bad times, punctuated by moments of sheer terror. And that's just the music. The lyrics are even more explicit in their depths of doom. The largely acoustic settings simply enhance the sense of impending disaster. Sample at your own risk. If you believe in a soul, guard it carefully.

Jon Worley