Over the course of two LPs and an EP, Guy Blakeslee and his Entrance alter ego grew to detest his record-label sponsors for their incessant artistic impositions. In a decisive move to liberate himself from having to continuously make things "more concise," Blakeslee decided to independently record, produce, and release his next album. His vision came to fruition early last summer when he put out Prayer of Death on his ad hoc Entrance Records. Although the album had been released, Blakeslee was still on the lookout for a real record label to give it a proper debut. He must've said the right prayers to the right spirits, as '06 wound down, the modest psych-rock label Tee Pee Records scooped up the album and unleashed it on this world.

With his previous records, Blakeslee was heralded as a precocious blues upstart, throwing a skillful, honorific nod to all the blues greats of the Delta while staving off Claptonitis. But with Prayer of Death, he spikes his passion for the blues with a preternatural, electric maelstrom that invokes both the specters of the Delta as well as some transient ghosts from North Africa and the Balkans. On his new album, like a wailing banshee somehow escaping her cursed confinement, Blakeslee howls as if each release of breath might force his soul from his body and bring about his eternal freedom. His communion with spirits of the past no longer seems so much reverential as it does preparatory; dark and torrid—with songs like the revision of "Valium Blues" totally enveloped in sitar vibrations, unbridled electric guitar shrieks, and furious string arrangements—Prayer of Death beckons death with every opportunity.