The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Like the Appalachian mining song from which they took their name, O’Death do not tell tales of pretty flowers or hold the secret to peace on earth. Instead, fables of burials, loose women, and the perils of sin make up the majority of the Brooklyn band’s anarchic repertoire.

“Thanks for having us on Halloween,” announces vocalist Greg Jamie with a menacing gaze that cuts through the assembled crowd. Witness a man nonchalantly adept at commanding both his band and audience.

The singer’s gruff demeanour is no accident; on their recently re-issued debut, Head Home, the quintet reveal a bizarre knack of being able to yoke gothic-tinged punk with earthy folk tones. It’s scary stuff.

Honouring the hand-me-down tradition of bluegrass, wherein words are changed over time, O’Death avoid relying on set lyrics. ‘Down To Rest’ sees the band fashioning a gypsy hoedown in the vain of fellow New Yorkers’ Gogol Bordello, while ‘All The World’ revels in a Waits-like folk with the mournful fiddle melody of Bob Pycior playing off Jamie’s barrelling vocals.

Sporting shit-eating grins and partaking in much convulsing, the band resemble toothless drunk vagabonds with drummer David Rogers-Berry jumping up from behind his kit on every beat, while shirtless bassist Newman jolts from one side of the stage to the other hollering into a non-existent mic.

Mixing the sacred with the profane, O’Death are clearly a group well practised in the manifold joys of the darker side of music, and, of course, the only entertainment on Halloween to trick and treat.