With Helldorado, the third installment of SPIRITWORLD’s death-western trifecta, chief hombre Stu Folsom takes the listener deeper into a world where the hot desert sun beats down on his singular vision of the American West as a gateway to hell. “It’s a different album than the past two,” says Folsom of the thematic and sonic journey that began with the Las Vegas band’s 2020’s Pagan Rhythms LP and continued with 2022’s Deathwestern. Now the story rides on in a cloud of dust and a spray of blood with his latest offering. Helldorado blasts the Mojave-born bloodlust and stomping, tomahawk riffs SPIRITWORLD won their brutal, horrific vision of the Old West with, while riding straight into macabre Americana.
Helldorado not only tightens the reins on SPIRITWORLD’s riff-riding attack that has won the band “most played” stature at Sirius XM’s Liquid Metal, but also looks over its shoulder—cigarillo dangling from a sun-parched lip—at their punk-driven outlaw country origins. Folsom and his gang first assaulted Vegas Elks Lodges in 2017 on a mission to brand country music with a manic singalong energy cultivated over years in the local hardcore scene. “Dwight Yoakam probably meant as much to me growing up as Black Flag or Slayer did,” says Stu.
With country in his soul and metal in his veins, Folsom yearned for the power of the riff. This found him teaming with producer/mixer Sam Pura, who has produced all three SPIRITWORLD records, to unleash Pagan Rhythms, first on the tiny independent label Safe Inside Records. The buzzed-about debut caught the eye of Century Media Records, who signed the band and issued the album worldwide a year later. The reaction to the record, which drew comparisons to the likes of Slayer and Integrity, was overwhelming. It was the purity of Folsom’s vision that won raves from the likes of Gary Holt and Max Cavalera of Soulfly, who praised the band on social media.
Helldorado is the next chapter of Folsom’s cycle of Western weirdness, drawing inspiration from his own published literary work, Godlessness, a collection of short stories rooted in Lovecraftian horror and Louis L’Amour’s classic tales of the American West. “Stigmata Scars,” featuring additional guitar work by Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator, digs even deeper into SPIRITWORLD’s horrific lyrical vistas.
SPIRITWORLD live is where the rubber meets the road for Stu Folsom and crew. Taking the stage in embroidered, rhinestone-studded jackets and Stetson hats, the energized fivesome is literally Elvis’ Wrecking Crew from hell. From their inaugural stint on Decibel Magazine’s branded tour with Obituary and Municipal Waste in early 2022, to North American runs including a co-headline tour with metal legends Kreator and Sepultura, as well as hardcore heroes Stick to Your Guns and European festival appearances at the UK’s Bloodstock Open Air and France’s Hellfest, the band has built a formidable live reputation. “The mentality on some of these tours is literally ripping a page from Ramones or Against Me!—don’t stop, no stage banter, just rip your songs.”
One thing’s for sure: SPIRITWORLD is back with an album that is as much Sergio Leone as it is Slayer. When asked to sum up where it’s all going, Stu Folsom steps back, considers the question, and answers plainly: “Straight to hell, my friend. Straight to hell.”