Argyle Goolsby – The Wild And Woeful West Virginia
A Corpse With No Name - Vinyl 7” - 2013
Tracklist
A – The Being (Argyle Goolsby)*
B – What’s Become Of Mamie Thurman? (The Big Bad)
If you’re familiar with horrorpunk as a scene, it’s rife with monsters, especially the universal/Universal ones – with songs all but mandated to name-drop classic creeps like Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, etc. Much more uncommon is the presence of “actual” cryptozoological creatures woven into the lyrics
Argyle Goolsby, the reigning king of horrorpunk, is no stranger to the cryptids that may creep around the real world. With his previous band Blitzkid, Goolsby penned the song “Genus Unknown,” which documented the accounts of the Mothman and the part it may have played in the infamous collapse of the Silver Bridge.
Seven years later, recording as a solo artist, Goolsby took on another beloved West Virginian entity – The Flatwoods Monster – with his song “The Being.”
This is a slower, brooding rocker, about half the speed of most of his Blitzkid tracks, but what it sacrifices in pace, the song makes up for in intensity. Sung through crooning vocals and harmonies, Goolsby’s lyrics tell of something fiery crashing down from the sky at night and curious residents of Flatwoods following the lingering light to come upon the scene, and the presence of…The Being.
Goolsby questions whether The Being is a monster in the mist or a case of mass hysteria, and the chorus asks a serious of speculative questions about the creature’s whereabouts:
“Was it a star-born visitor or just the imagination?
Was it a trick of misplaced light or an interplanetary visitation?
Was it warfare in the skies that brought down half his tribe,
Across the heart of Flatwoods’ darkest night?
The record’s cover art is spectacular as well, depicting a keen-looking Flatwoods Monster, red eyes shining bright as it clutches a sign welcoming motorists to West Virginia.
And, though not about a proper monster, the reverse side of the record includes a track by the band The Big Bad about the well-known Appalachian ghost story of Mamie Thurman – a woman who was brutally murdered and whose ghost is said to still haunt the stretch of road where her body was discarded – and is not a bad little tune either.
