Victorian songwriter Matt Malone deals in dark, heavy and sombre music on his debut album. The pace is leaden, his voice a gothic, stentorian and preacher-like baritone. There are obvious touchstones like Nick Cave, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Johnny Cash who he absorbs into his death blues soundtrack of rattling strings, ghostly sounds and strummed wasteland ballads. “Now I caress your throat with the lips of a traitor’s embrace” is typical of the doomed poetry and murder ballad sensibility across the album and though it is devoid of light relief and the gloomy pallor rarely lifts from the songs, Malone has created an often captivating and stylistically hypnotic debut album.

Chris Familton