Since I started Black Metal Archives about a year ago, I’ve been singing the praises of Christopher Thomas Elliott—the man behind Buzzard and Satiricus Doomicus Americus—to anyone who’ll bloody listen. And with damn good reason. The man is one of the most distinct, raw, and genuinely gifted musicians clawing his way through the underground right now. What he’s doing isn’t just Doom Folk—it’s the sound of a man documenting the collapse of civilization with a cracked voice and a righteous sneer, a prophet screaming poetry into the apocalypse.
Across three releases, he’s crafted his own desolate world—a place where misery and melody hold hands, where cynicism bleeds into hope, and where folk, doom, and raw confessionals blur into something utterly his own. I’ve reviewed all of them. Every single one. And not once has he let me down. In fact, every record feels like another page torn from the same burning gospel—angry, human, and uncomfortably honest. It’s a discography that functions as a single, extended, and deeply compelling diagnosis of modern spiritual decay.
And yet, somehow, his latest work, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright, raises the bar even higher.
From the first note, this record is a cold, hard condemnation of the human race as a species. It is a requiem for our collective arrogance and a blistering farewell to the comfortable lie of progress. This is the sound of someone standing in the ashes and laughing—not out of madness, but out of absolute, crystal-clear clarity. Elliott isn’t merely observing the rot; he’s participating in the necessary final inventory.
The production is as uncompromising as the message. This isn’t polished studio sheen; this is the sound of recording in a utter suffocation, capturing the last acoustics of despair. The guitars ring like rusted bells, metallic and brittle, carrying simple, cyclical melodies that burrow deep into your skull. The acoustic elements provide a stark, skeletal structure, while the heavier, doom-laden distortion drags the air thick with sorrow. It’s the perfect tension: the folksy intimacy of a campfire confession layered beneath the crushing weight of universal doom.
Elliott’s vocals possess a cracked authenticity that no studio trick could ever recreate. This is the sound of a voice that has seen too much and refused to turn away. Every lyric hits like a confession and a curse all at once—a stark reflection of a world that’s rotting in plain sight, and a profound refusal to look away or offer false comfort.
He has always had that rare, chilling ability to merge beauty with disgust, serenity with despair. But here, it feels perfected—the melodies more haunting, the anguish more tangible, the fire sharper. The songwriting is deceptively simple, often relying on repetitive structures that become hypnotic, pulling the listener into the “unending cycle” of human folly and cosmic dread. The repetition isn’t lazy; it’s a grim, liturgical trance that forces the listener to sit with the sickness of the theme until it becomes internal.
It’s as if every ounce of anger, grief, and exhaustion that’s built up over years of watching the world burn—the political failures, the environmental collapses, the total breakdown of genuine human connection—has finally found its perfect, devastating vessel.
Everything is Not Going to Be Alright isn’t a title meant to shock—it’s a statement of truth. It functions as a cracked but clear mirror held up to the species. It is the counterpoint to the hollow, corporate optimism peddled by mainstream culture. By rejecting the notion that salvation is imminent, Elliott achieves a powerful, inverted kind of hope: the freedom that comes with facing and accepting the worst-case scenario.
This is the beauty of the underground, the true power of Doom Folk taken to its extreme: it champions the craft of raw feeling and intellectual integrity over marketability. Elliott doesn’t just play instruments; he excavates emotions. He uses the stripped-down, desolate sonic palette to create a world that is ugly by design, forcing the listener to find the fragile, persistent beauty in the melody that still stubbornly rings out even as the world ends.
The album is a monumental piece of art for this specific moment in history. It is an honest, vicious, and necessary testament to the collapse. It doesn’t offer a path out, but it offers something far more valuable: recognition. The final message isn’t nihilism; it’s a defiant affirmation. The world may be ending, but we still have the fire to scream about it, and that scream is beautiful.
Everything is not Going to be Alright is available via the Buzzard Bandcamp page on November 7th.
CHOICE CUT: Screaming Into the Void
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Christopher Thomas Elliott has done it again. Everything is Not Going to Be Alright is the bleakest, boldest, and most brutally beautiful work of his career — a Doom Folk sermon for the end times. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: this man is one of the most essential voices in underground music right now. And if this is what the end sounds like, then I’ll gladly listen as the sky caves in.
