JS Donny - Death Folk

Long-awaited follow-up to that frustratingly short but extremely good 2024 10" of club-friendly-sludge-downtempo / death metal (?!) by Donna Candy’s JS Donny. This debut album largely surpasses expectations: 31 minutes of visceral, profound and superbly recorded (mixed & mastered) dark and hypnotizing folk fronted by JS Donny’s idiosyncratic singing. An album perfectly defined by its title, Death Folk, that I can’t really compare to anything, but that sits somewhere between Bohren & Der Club of Gore, His Name Is Alive, Silent Hill 2 OST, and death metal bands I can’t name. Released in the last weeks of 2025, it was obviously missed by all the EOTY lists published before the actual end of the year, but it effortlessly made it to my top 5... Highest recommendation, especially in its luxurious and incredibly well-sounding colored vinyl form.

I know that I'm missing out on so many of the clues that'd help me understand JS Donny's creative process, as she's quite obviously influenced by a wide range of extreme rock genres - from screamo to doom metal - a musical background that I don't have. But she channels these influences into a territory I feel like I know well, that of slightly desperate loner folk, championed by the likes of Nick Drake or Elliott Smith, a long continuum of tightly arranged songs, strictly relying on the guitar/voice pair, that projects the listener in decaying cities and dark fantasy settings - Bloodborne’s Hemwick Charnel Lane or Dark Soul's Darkroot Garden - places both terrifying and soothing. (M/M - wholesale: shops, contact us)