The late singer-songwriter Judee Sill considered her style Country Cult Baroque, and Dan Spencer finds that this is a perfect way to describe his own music. His penchant for mixing morbid lyrical content and black metal imagery with country-fried Southern rock doesn’t feel forced at all, considering his eclectic taste and background as a mortician. No, really.

Born near Nashville in Smyrna in 1993, the Tennessee troubadour grew up going to see hardcore bands in the region because there were no age restrictions on those kind of shows. He eventually moved to the college town of Cookeville, TN of which he notes, “It’s got this pretty unique history of having a way better music scene than it ought to.” Despite being in the heartland of country music, his interest in the genre coalesced in an entirely circuitous way, via the California-based, punk-pedigreed experimental band Amps For Christ. “They would cover a lot of traditional Scottish folk songs that morphed into Appalachian mountain music, which morphed into country music. I had to hear it through that lens to get into it.”