I love me some good ol’ fashioned horror themed folk punk and Harley Poe is about the best out there in this incredibly small genre. If you’re not familiar with Harley Poe the 10 second run down goes like this. Once upon a time there was a Christian folk-punk band called Calibretto 13 and they made some music. After a while they dropped the 13, re-branded themselves as just Calibretto, stopped singing about Christianity and released an EP titled Dead by Dawn (an ode to the greatest horror movie franchise of all time, The Evil Dead series). They released another album, the band broke up, and then the lead singer Joseph Whiteford went off and created Harley Poe.
Under Harley Poe Whiteford has been free to sing about horror movies and the darker side of imagination without without enraging Calibretto 13 fans by switching his lyrics from Jesus to supernatural homicidal maniacs. With album titles like Pagan Holiday and Satan, Sex, and No Regrets I think it’s safe to say the ties to the associations of his old band have been fully cut. As a lover of horror movies, punk, and folk music I can’t even begin to tell you what this band does for me on a psychological level. It’s like someone flipped a happy switch on in the back of my brain, which may sound odd considering the content of some of Harley Poe’s songs.
Pagan Holiday is a horror / Halloween themed folk-punk explosion that is a toe-tapping, gore filled, blood splattered romp from beginning to end. After the opening instrumental “Vengeance the Demon” the EP jumps to the next track “Close the Door”, which is an ode to the classic horror movie Pumpkinhead and after eight and a half minutes of folky terror called “Outcrowd” we get a fast past tribute to horror movies as a whole entitled “Gorehound” and that brings us to my favorite track on the EP. We already know banjos and horror go together like Leatherface and a chainsaw, but the cover of the Halloween theme using a banjo, accordion, drum set, and what sounds like a bongo or two is just brilliant. You really do have to hear it to understand it, but trust me. It’s awesome. Once that amazing cover ends Mr. Whiteford hits us with the 13 minute title track “Pagan Holliday”, followed by banjo fueled folk-punk cover of “Paint It Black”, which is just as fantastic as your imagination might be telling you it is. The EP wraps up with “Terror Trippin’ 2” a mash up of movie scenes, sound effects, and distorted talking, which I honestly didn’t care for. I would rather they just ended the EP with “Paint It Black” and ended on a high note.
If you’re into horror movies, folk-punk, or just like singers with very interesting voices you should give this one a spin. If this is your first exposure to Harley Poe then I HIGHLY suggest you go back and listen through a couple of their other albums and try to pick out the references to your favorite horror movies. There’s even a song in their back catalog titled “That Time Of The Month” that’s about something more sinister than a visit from Aunt Flow. Halloween might be long over, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop celebrating it… I certainly haven’t.
Rating: 5/5