Self-Released – 13 June 2025
An elegy, an embrace, an emotional end
Its hard to believe Murder By Death have only been around for 25 years, they just seemed to have been an everpresent fixture on the outskirts of the scene. A not-quite punk band with a punk ethos and sound that’s impossible to deny, standing out thanks to their Southern Gothic Americana sounds and themes, improbably well-crafted arrangements, Sarah Balliet’s haunting cello, cinematic story-telling and frontman Adam Turla’s baritone that you just know would sound perfect on the stage at Folsom Prison.
With the release of Egg and Dart, the Indiana outfit’s tenth and final album, the band continue to show off their versatility and have created a longing in listeners for more and more. Like every great MBD record before it, the band’s swan song is brilliant, theatrical and haunting, bitter and sweet, uplifting and incredibly sad. The album’s production is polished without losing its raw energy. Egg & Dart offers a fresh perspective while honoring the band’s legacy. This swansong marks an impressive end. Egg And Dart‘s impact will be felt for years to come, solidifying Murder By Death’s place in music history.
Every track reminds the listener that this is the end, whether celebratory or lamented, Turla’s lyrics examine the impending end of MBD, as we know it. At least thats how it sounds if thats what you are looking to hear, like on album opener “Searcher.” Sure, its easy to read the turns of phrase to symbolize a heart softened by love of another. Then again, “I used to be a fortress, that smoldered with hate, you plied me with kindness, marched through my gates, then a feeling of hope started to shine through, all the cracks that I used to blame on you, and replaced them with one burning truth, now I burn for you” could easily be a biographic roadmap, tracking the narrator as his emotions flow from angry songwriter to accepted musician to codependent artist.
Nowhere is the band’s resignation more evident than on the 4th track “Sorry” when Turla seems to admit that he just doesn’t seem into it all: “it has come our time to part, for I can only give you half my heart, to carry on would be unkind, I love you, I’m sorry, & goodbye.”
Plenty of artists have put out that “this is it” record, the kind of record drowning in finality and too lucid in its self-immolation. Egg And Dart isn’t that, not even close. Of course it’s aware of its funereal vibes but it is not lost in the dirge. The truth in the record is defiant, it stands unapologetic in its farewell, and grateful in its connections. There is an indisputable pang that runs through the record, but it’s the kind of internal pain that only comes from loving something deeply enough to recognize when it is time to bid it adieu.
As a farewell, Egg and Dart doesn’t strive for a bombastic parting, it does what Murder By Death have become known for. It tells stories. It plays with shadows, dances in the smoke and flirts in the mirrors. It makes us feel at home in the deepest recesses of their mind.
I’ve been around long enough to remember hundreds of bands who said this was the end only to recuperate and return. If this is the end, it feels like the end of a certain era of music and the end of the emotion it invokes. And somehow, even shuffling toward the sunset, they’ve given us one more aural image to remember.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/