power ! is a record influenced by personal and political complexities and, therefore, difficult to describe with buzzwords. However, a few niche buzzwords like “ballads” “americana” “experimental” (not the fanciest buzzword) and “metal” come close. None of these are adequate in describing the new record by jesus is the path to heaven, yet all are essential elements in understanding the concepts, both sonic and symbolic, that the band is playing with. power ! was conceived after jordan h locked themselves in a small room in Swannanoa, NC and forced out as many songs as they could on a single concept: use the violent, penitential language of christianity to comment on the political violence of christianity.

How much blood can be discussed, how many lambs have to be killed out of the context of religious adoration in order for the listener, christian or otherwise, to begin to think twice about the ubiquity of the violence? Growing up, the language of the church was poured into jordan h to the point where violence became an implicit reality of the world. It took years before the language subsided and was replaced with a vulnerable understanding of violence in all its forms, and, as though a radical thought, that violence no longer appeared inevitable but instead it appeared as determined.

Starting from christian language, the songs began to take the shape of subversive prayers. Sweet Blood of Christ, in which a torrent of blood covers the south east, could be read as a positive religious statement if it wasn’t for Thommy Underhill and Zach Jordan’s noisy arrangements. To contrast that contrast, Bow and Bend utilizes a simple mountain dulcimer and vocal arrangement to describe the same scenes as Sweet Blood of Christ, however without the wink that the band is being subversive. That wink, the largest and slowest, comes in the final track, Little Lamb, which rises in a crescendo inspired by the works of Gavin Bryars. It is the most experimental and emotive track on the record, devolving into frantic, blood-curdling screams. The personal nature of Little Lamb finds its pair in the first song on the record, The Lord Has Bled A Line, which includes biographical as well as impressionistic lyrics relating to the psychological consequences of fundamentalist religion.

While the lyrics on power ! adhere to the rapturous language of the evangelical church, the music acts as tonal direction, at times revealing the immanent horror felt by the band, at other times reflecting the vastness of religious experience, and at other times calling on familiar Appalachian sonic and lyrical motifs, which are utilized to ground the music in the region out of which it was created. Not wanting to fall into the trend of recontextualizing preexistent Appalachian ballads, jordan h chose to immerse themselves in the repetitive language and symbols of Appalachian music, choosing to recontextualize those symbols as waystones through the rivers and mountains of blood that flood the record. The ballad structure, with an emphasis on refrains, becomes a defining feature of each track. The fiddle, performed by Geoff White, creates the sonic impression that the album exists within the sphere of the “down-home,” whistleblowing to anyone familiar with south eastern folk music that the album is in proximity to the “authentic south” (whatever that is).

With the help of producer and audio engineer Zeb Wright (BASK) and mastering engineer Jeremy Richard Snyder (IDLES; Pure Adult), power ! stands apart from the long history of Appalachian music as a commentary on the implicit religious themes inherent in the roots of all south eastern art forms by using the structures and symbols of said art forms to critique the way a violent, penitential christianity holds the region, and the whole of the country, by the roots, infusing christblood into the tender nodes of American culture and politics.