Self-proclaimed one man band and one of the damned guys of outlaw country, Scott H. Biram, brings The Bad Testament, an album that comes after various postmortem shifts and nothing-but-blood concepts.
As the description suggests, the album is placed West from the Bible and South from the guidebook for rehabilitated alcoholics. This is not an innocent set of references, as the West insinuates the inventions of civilization, and the South represents the base of American culture. We already know enough about the West and South, but both references remain abundant resource of creativity.
Both country and Americana find their home on this album, woven into themes of sin, deviation, repentance and religion. Obsession with religious matrix is manifested in absolutely every lyrics on The Bad Testament. Scott H. Biram is not a holy father, nor the one who is confessing. He is a witness.
Witnessing personal and collective downward spiral, Scott offers an evil message with this album. Harsh lyrics are supported by country, hillbilly, punk and blues sounds. He sings about the human condition, and no matter how philosophical this term sounds, the raw lyrics cover existential problems and situations. Even when he writes about heavy topics, Birham reduces them to the simplicity of the bottle of whiskey or red wine. Alcohol is not just the matter of excess ion, rather a referential point.
Red Wine directly adverts to that major problem, while Righteous Ways means confrontation and finding the right path (utopia?). Deviance is in the center on Crippled & Crazy, a song whose sound radiates desperate despair. Vocal is soaked in whiskey on TrainWrecker and True Religion. The last three tracks on the album are instrumentals, which degrades the whole impression. Not only that the instrumentals sound alike, but they also ruined the concept of the evil message that was supposed to be verbalized.
However, we can forgive Scott for the bad epilogue. The Bad Testament is equally raw, aggressive and dirty as any of his previous albums.
