Federation X offers a scary, brutal folk-core sound that is part Tom Waits, part Anti-Seen, and part murder ballads. One can picture them in a lonely woodshed conjuring their twisted music unbeknownst by distant civilization and probably best left undisturbed. For disturbed is what they seem, with their fearsome tales of a “hatchetman,” knives, and blood in a Southern gothic, deliberate, hard rock delivery. – Tom Schulte