Those Poor Bastards play miserable and primitive old-time
gothic country music. Lonesome Wyatt (guitar, vocals) and The Minister
(banjo, bass, etc.) are both legally certified holiness preachers.
If
you're looking for slick, over-produced, commercial songs, you'd better
cover your delicate little ears. Those Poor Bastards play it raw and they
play it mean. Be a pal and support independent anti-corporate country music.
Those Poor Bastards are the best Gothic Country I have heard yet to this
day. The depressing gloomy vocals coming out of this drifter named Lonesome
Wyatt has hints of Marilyn Manson to Nick Cave, Throwrag and maybe even
a hint of a demented Adam Ant with a shot of a Pilled Up Johnny Cash...
And the Minister is backing up Lonesome Wyatt with a style that is a cross
between erie strung out folk music with a creepy blend of The Nightmare
Before Christmas!!!!!!!!!
— Hank Williams III
The Plague reviews:
Unsettling gothic gospel altercations spun and thickened with a dark angst and a rustic atmosphere. Coarse vocals are set amidst a haunting cacophony of vintage instruments and cantankerous rhythms.
— Maximum Ink Magazine
Hellfire Hymns reviews:
If Hell had a saloon with swingin' doors, Those Poor Bastards would be the house band.
— Black Angel Promotions
Hellfire Hymns, the second full length from Madison, Wisconsin's Those Poor Bastards, is a masterpiece of infernal atmosphere. The production creaks like a gallows pole, and the songs don't seem ancient as much as they seem otherworldly, crafted by damned souls on Hell's plain.
These songs speak of bloody redemption, of what befalls those who stray from the straight and narrow. As sanctified as the songs seem, you get the idea that Lonesome Wyatt and The Minister don't speak from a high horse, but from personal experience of the tribulations of the damned.
Let the death country revolution descend. A+
— Owl & Bear
Songs of Desperation reviews:
Even in a crisp digital format, the new Songs of Desperation sounds as if Harry Smith dug it out of some trunk in a long-abandoned Mississippi shack that was once shared by The Cramps, Nick Cave, and the Louvin Brothers. The miserable, primitive duo carries on as if the graveyard is but a step ahead, the devil a step behind, and there's hell to pay in every direction.
— The Onion
First the time, which is anything from the mid-19th Century
onwards, then the place, which could be anywhere desolate with a high
proportion of inbred lunatics, and finally the sounds that eviscerate
a raw country beat and slap it around, douse it in humour and allows husks
of humanity to bake in its sarcastic heat. Sound good to you?...
Read full review
— Mick Mercer
Sounding like they were recorded in the 1930s on broken equipment in a desolate region of southern Mississippi, Those Poor Bastards evoke the kind of heart-wrenching feelings of misery and loneliness you'd hope to hear on an album called Songs of Desperation. Unrelentingly slow and scratchy, this true old-time Gothic country draws more influence from the likes of Tom Waits and Nick Cave than Johnny Cash. The inky concoction of organ, banjo, and guitar on Songs of Desperation is the background music for themes of sold souls, empty lives, and certain death, but the album is still not without an element of black humour. If you find rockabilly and psychobilly's treatment of the genre too cartoonish and trivial, Those Poor Bastards offers the polar opposite you've been looking for.
— Rue Morgue Magazine
Country Bullshit reviews:
Like a trash version of Flannery O'Connor.
— Music Magazine, Japan
Wyatt and the boys have dished up one hot serving of backwoods Gothicism
for all you little ladies and gents. This EP has Wyatt falling more into
the genre he defines: gothic country. These songs are those sung in dank
cemeteries by their musical residences. The first song, 'The Accident'
draws heavily on the folk-gospel tradition, utilizing vocals reminiscent
of Tom Waits' most off-kilter songs. 'Black Dog Yodel' tones things down,
replacing country music's natural melancholia with nihilism. The stand-out
track, 'Radio Country' addresses one of the greatest crimes in musical
history: the commercialization and murder of true country music. This
album is a must have for fans of traditional American music and/or old
timey gothic aesthetics.
— Finding Datura Report
