Despite what you might think, Murder By Death, which is playing The Paramount Saturday, does not play death metal.
As vocalist and guitarist Adam Turla says, they share their moniker with “a silly 70s movie. We knew we were making this dark music but we didn’t want to take it too seriously.” Their sound has been described as “It’s like if Johnny Cash was singing for the Cure,” or, as Turla has said, “like spooky Western music.”
Their latest album, The Other Shore, was inspired, he says, by “the feeling that a lot of people are expressing right now. There seems to be a lot of fear going around and the idea that … there’s just something unsustainable happening and I feel like the biggest manifestation of that is you start to feel this pop culture and art culture sort of mimicking that feeling in their forms.”
On their particular creative process, Turla notes “I wrote like 25 songs for the album and I would present them to the band. They would help me sort of vet the songs and decide what was worth spending more time on and what was worth them working on at all,” later adding, “I really wanted their opinions,” and, “with this group we had such a good time in that process.”
Though Turla and cellist Sarah Baillet have been with MBD its entire 19 years, there have been different lineups, and MBD has toured with musicians of all kinds: indie, punk, metal, Americana, pop. They have performed in unusual venues such as a cave, and plan to hit some barns this summer.
The goal of their Huntington show, however, is simple. It’s just, says Turla, to “introduce the songs to a new audience.”
MBD will be open for Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls. Doors: 6 p.m. Show: 7:30. Tickets are $25 to $75.
Photo credit: Mara Battiste
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