USX The Valley Path

USX The Valley Path

(Neurot Recordings)

By: Chris Davison

You're stumbling down a dusty, rock infested backwaters highway, lit only by the glare of the car following you ten paces behind. To the right and to the left, occasional bushes and the crucified shadows of Cactus crawl past you malevolently. A combination of concussion, cheap whiskey and some pills sold to you by a Mexican gentleman some hours earlier make your head buzz like the insistent hiss of a short wave radio. In the very distance, just as the gloom begins to curtain the horizon, you think you can see a lone shack, outlined to look like a crouching troll. Even now as you stumble, glaring at your hands, you can see the tell tale thick black tar outlines of dried blood. How it got there is beyond your comprehension, far beyond your meagre knowledge. You aren't even sure if it is yours.

Your mind is disconnected; the sounds of the crickets telling their sad lonely stories to the vacant night air are occasionally allowed entrance to your consciousness. In between are reverberating guitar twangs, psychedelic flashes of a long haired man standing heavy-footed on the wah-wah peddle, playing the sad mournful solo that accompanies the desolate throb of the veins in your temples. You fall jarringly to your knees, and hear a scared, scary laughter echo with phlegm and menace. The chill of the night air is suddenly manifested in your very bones, as you realise that the horrible chortles – the bellowing, hacking, soul less mirth is coming from your own mouth. The tell tale rumble of tyres on gravel stops momentarily. You hear the wind whistle. The car rumbles. Your feet again begin to crunch against the ground, a train in the distance, too dark to see. Your body lurches rhythmically as you struggle to find any kind of steady inertia. Then again, the horizon begins to bob and weave; a heat haze or your distorted vision? It's too difficult to tell. Impossible even to say how long you have been walking, or why.

Hours, minutes, seconds, lifetimes drift by. Your hand. The door of the shack. The car rumbles to a halt. You bow your head. You have walked the valley path; but even now you know that no one can walk the path without paying the price.

This review has been written using the 39 minute, one track post-metal opus “The Valley Path.” It is a piece of haunted Americana, and most unsuitable for night road trips, unless you live in a horror movie.

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