Album Review: Nothin' But Blood by Scott H. Biram

Much of the greatest country music happens in the bars on Saturday night and the church on Sunday morning, and few people working today embody that spirit like dirty old one man band Scott H. Biram. On Nothin' But Blood, Biram fluctuates wildly between the extremes of the whiskey bottle and the baptismal river, bathing in the glorious history of southern blues while driving his rusty hooks into it to drag it forward.Whether he's channeling the ghost of Howlin' Wolf on "Backdoor Man," blasting his way through the sludge-metal bluegrass of "Around the Bend" or reliving the past of a Vietnam vet in the acoustic "Nam Weed," Biram is relentless with his emotions, channeling everything through a battered Gibson hollow-body.

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Any album that includes a song about a guy who gets nostalgic about smoking weed during his hitch in Vietnam is clearly aiming to sound hard as nails, and would Scott H. Biram have it any other way? Released in 2014, Nothin' But Blood finds the hard-living and hard-playing one-man band Biram sounding as intense as ever, and the cranked-up hillbilly stomp of "Alcohol Blues," the almost-metal assault of "Around the Bend," and the gritty boogie of "Church Point Girls" confirm he's still got booze, dope, violence, and women on his mind. But Biram also seems to have developed some real concerns about his spiritual well-being; the album's second song, "Gotta Get to Heaven," finds him pondering the consequences of his wicked ways and the high stakes of life in the 21st century, while the woeful country blues of "Never Comin' Home" is a powerful evocation of where the wild life can leave someone.

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Scott H. BiramNothin’ But Blood(Bloodshot)3.5 out of 5 stars He might be a one man band but blues/country roots rocker Scott Biram has enough of the devil in him to sound like a full group playing in hell. He’s not shy about it either, tossing “f” bombs while recounting various sexual adventures in Mance Lipscomb’s “Alcohol Blues” and rocking out about “Church Point Girls” with a demonish, snarling growl that would send Howlin’ Wolf running for cover.

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Normally, I scoff at the designation “one-man band” because it sounds an awful lot like a cheap marketing maneuver, but listening to Scott H. Biram gives me pause. Recognizing that critics have said as much before about his work, I’ll say it again: Scott H. Biram (and this includes Nothin’ But Blood) sounds more like a demented mixtape of Doc Watson, Mance Lipscomb, and a couple of Slayer demos than a single man.

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Scott H. Biram — Nothin’ But Blood (Bloodshot)The cover to Scott H. Biram’s Nothin’ But Blood shows the Austin blues-rocker hip-deep in a bloody lake, his head thrown back in some sort of quasi-mystic transport, his shirt open, his tattooed arms dripping with crimson fluid. It’s part baptism narrative, part noire-ish crime scene and altogether unsettling, a fitting image for this one-man phenomenon’s furious juxtaposition of religiosity and raunch.

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Scott H. Biram Nothin' but Blood (Bloodshot Records) Austin's notorious one-man band returns with equal measures of gospel and Gomorrah on his eighth LP, Nothin' but Blood. Delivering a motormouth baptismal rap on "Gotta Get to Heaven" and the Christ-conjuring country choir of "When I Die" on the same saturated platter as piss-drunk altercation "Only Whiskey" and an especially horny adaption of Mance Lipscomb's "Alcohol Blues," Scott H.

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Scott H. Biram — the ‘H’ ought to stand for ‘Hell-raiser’ — comes across as a rather unruly individual, and certainly not one to offer undue niceties even if prompted. On his latest album, the ominously titled Nothin’ But Blood, he ups the ante on acerbic expression and takes his visceral anguish to a higher level than ever before.

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