Hey, What Happened to Book of Black Earth?
Remember Book of Black Earth from Seattle? They had three records, 2006’s The Feast, 2008’s Horoskopus, and 2011’s The Cold Testament. The first and third of those are just damn good, but Horoskopus is a monumental piece of crushing, catchy blackened death metal. That record found its way onto my Spotify the other day, and I found myself raging to every minute of it.
It got me wondering what those guys were up to, if maybe they’d released anything that had just flown under my radar. Then I remembered, hey, I’m a metal journalist, sort of, and could probably track some of those guys down and find out! So I did, and they were happy to oblige me.
Frontman TJ Cowgil is the mind behind King Dude, a dark country-rock project that sounds like Nick Cave and Those Poor Bastards got roped into playing a show for a bunch of heroin addicts. They toured with Ghost last year and did an album with Chelsea Wolfe that’s extremely creepy. Cowgil also runs a label, Not Just Religious Music out of Germany. When I reach out to him, TJ’s nice, but his answer’s both pretty straightforward and kinda vague:
“We never officially broke up…I’d call it an ‘extended hiatus.’”
TJ puts me in touch with BoBE drummer Joe Axler, who know drums for grindcore act and sitcom soundtrackers Theories. Joe gets a little more descriptive:
“I gotta agree with TJ, we never actually did break up BoBE, we just kinda moved on to other things. TJ and I did discuss a couple options of what we should do. But that was five years ago. Who knows, maybe some day we will write another record, but if we do it’ll pretty much be for us, I’m guessing, cause while BoBE did alright, I’m pretty sure the people that were into us probably have moved on as well and we always were the band that ‘trve metalheads’ loved to hate.”
I haven’t moved on, Joe! I haven’t moved on!
Anyway, it seems Book of Black Earth neither imploded in a blast of drama or descend into the underground to release cassette-only EPs–everyone was doing their own thing and wandered off. If they get back together for another album, cool; if not, at least the members are making cool music.
Here’s a playlist of some of some classic Book of Black Earth jams. Enjoy.
