New Music Monday: Murder by Death

Wow, sorry about the late post on this one. Anyway, I've discovered another intriguing band: Murder by Death. They're a four-piece group formed in 2000 in Bloomington, Indiana. Not terribly interesting. But add to that that one of their number is a cellist, and that their songs deal with all sorts of topics, from mutiny on the high seas to mining, and you've suddenly got some very interesting post-punk/country/indie rock/instrumental stuff. As you can see, there's really no classifying these guys.
The friend who introduced this band to me mentioned that her favorite album of theirs is In Bocca Al Lupo, so I checked it out. The album has many songs that deal with sin and hell, reminding me of Avenged Sevenfold - in subject matter, not in musical style. Their music style sounds like what Faulkner would sound like if put to music.
Lead singer and guitarist Adam Turla explained the influences of the album on Murder by Death's website: "There were several books that were influential in writing this album- some of them were Dante's Inferno, Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, and Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Basically all these stories had issues that seemed relevent to the record and helped the creation of these songs." There you have it. I'm not an expert on this band by any means, but I do have some favorite tracks that I'll post below.

My favorites: "Brother," "Dynamite Mine," "Comin Home," "The Devil in Mexico (ft. Gerard Way)"