Track By Track: The Southern Fold Breaks Down New Album Bible Fear

With their driving sound, haunting lyrics, and honest approach to delivering compelling, enthralling stories, The Southern Fold is well on their way to becoming Ireland’s favorite blues-folk band.

After forming in 2014 at the hands of Kilkenny-born Emlyn Holden and Dublin native Laura Hand, the band released their debut EP A True Ascension from the Wayward Path two years later and has been touring Ireland ever since.

Last fall, The Southern Fold released their new album Bible Fear, a hard hitting gospel and blues-infused collection of 13 tracks that hits close to home, conveying the band’s true heart and soul by covering heavy topics such as war, death, and religion. They broke down the entire album, track by track, exclusively for Musical Notes Global. Get the details below.

“Hold Back the Sun” was written about how an original ideal that's made up of something pure and beautiful and in the name of love can be taken on by a man-made institution and turned into something completely different to be used for someone's personal gain. It can be used as a tool of repression and fear. It was written about a lot of the abuse carried out by the Catholic church against generations of children in Ireland and beyond. It was written directly about the Tuam babies.

“Blood of Life” is an anti-war protest song. Actually, it's an anti-violence song. It's also about our apathy regarding casualties of war and violence, how the images we see and the stories we hear just become part of everyday life as we become desensitised to it which of course gives more power to the forces that keep on causing the wars in the name of greed and power.

“Save Your Soul” is a nod of respect to old time Gospel music. It has a cool, almost Rockabilly vibe going on. I suppose it's almost comical in it's old time fire and brimstone sentiment but if you get beyond that then the ideals laid out are as relevant now as they've ever been. We released this as the first single from the album and our friend, Dublin based Frieda Freytag, created a great video for the song that we've got up on YouTube.

“Sunday Best” is about as dark and despairing as it gets, but in a sweet poetic way! It's based on a poem I wrote a long time ago called 'When I Die' and when I wrote this song I was listening to a lot of Gothic Country stuff. It just appeals to that dark, sad, dramatic side of me. Our friend Gerard Moloney plays accordion on this one.

“Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost (Not Taken in Vain)” is probably the most straightforward country song on the album. It comes from somewhere in the Gram Parsons / 1967 California country school of things. It's written about a great friend of mine who slowly lost his love for life and eventually lost his life. Our friend David Murphy played pedal steel on this tune.

“Set Yourself on Fire with Love” is a song I find a little out of step with the rest of the record. It was also the first song we attempted in the studio and we had to drag it kicking and screaming to a finished version. It started with drums and bluegrass guitar runs but just didn't work. But a few people remarked that it had a John Lennon thing going on so I had to keep it in! Willie Headon's piano and Ger Moloney's accordion work really well on it too.

“Dead Unforgiven” was a song I wrote a few years ago but it didn't feel quite complete. When I added a middle part that was originally an unfinished idea that was laying around, it made things more interesting. It's our longest song at 9 and a half minutes and I got the chance to put in a self indulgent guitar solo! It's our Grateful Dead song!

“Mercy & Sin” is another song that continues with the God/Religion theme. Built around a simple riff and a minor chord, I really like the overall feel of the song with the cello intro. We used to open our gigs with this song for a while. Cello on the album played by the lovely Ella Englishby.

“Run On (For a Long Time)” I first heard on the Elvis album How Great Thou Art a thousand years ago, and over the years I morphed it into my own version based around a blues riff. It's such a great, timeless song with so many great versions out there but we feel happy enough that we put our own stamp on it.

“No-one is my Name” is a fairly desolate song. It came together pretty fast, almost like a poem put to music. It has a simple riff that reminds of some grunge bands. I always felt that it has a Cobain feel to it in music and lyrics. It's a dark song about a person feeling completely insignificant in the face of God and whatever is out there. Maybe it's about existentialism, but I'm not sure!

“The Devil in Me” is a simple blues tune that I wrote a few years back. I was hoping we could record it on the side of a street somewhere with traffic and people going by. It should have had that authentic field recording sound. It was the last thing we recorded for the album, just the guitar, Laura and myself all live in the same room. The devil is a metaphor for addiction and the demon is heroin.

“Bible Fear” the song was written after I'd had that album title in my head for a while. I read somewhere that Bible Fear is a term used for a phobia of religious imagery and characters, which is something I could identify with. I do, however, think religion can be a good thing if it saves somebody who needs it for peace of mind. I'm just more of a spiritual soul. So I wrote this song with no title and it turned out to have some religious imagery in the lyrics and I thought Bible Fear fit it well.

“God is a Ghost” was written around a traditional country folk chord progression. The melody pretty much played itself out to me and it was catchy. I had to drive somewhere just after I came up with the melody and I came up with the lyrics and recorded them into my phone in the car - hands free of course! It's a song I really like and the lyrics are empathetic of all good people. Also the thought of where God may be when bad seems to prevail over good. We could really do with a saviour at this point in time. If she or he would just show up and make themselves known.

Listen to Bible Fear below.