When Stu Folsom brought me the demos that became Pagan Rhythms, there wasn't a conventional band walking into the studio ready to make a record.
There was a vision. A collection of meticulously written demos. A fictional universe. Westerns, horror, hardcore, thrash, death metal and country music all smashed together into something that didn't really have a blueprint.
The question wasn't how do we record this band.
How do we make this thing real?
What We Did
Stu and I approached Pagan Rhythms more like making a movie than documenting a band. He had written and demoed the songs. Then we went through everything together, pulled the arrangements apart, refined the ideas, and figured out what every song actually needed.
If we could play it, we played it. If we couldn't, we found somebody who could.
Produced, engineered, mastered, plus guitar, bass, additional vocals, and other performances. For drums, we brought in players including Thomas Pridgen — exactly the kind of world-class musician the songs demanded.
It was complete world-building. Not just tones. Not just performances. The entire record.
Then People Started Paying Attention
Pagan Rhythms was initially released independently in 2020. There was no major-label machine behind it. But the record started spreading anyway.
Then Century Media called. The label signed SpiritWorld and re-released Pagan Rhythms worldwide.
The weird idea worked.
So We Kept Building It
Pagan Rhythms self-release → Century Media → DEATHWESTERN → HELLDORADO.
Three albums together, continuing to expand the same universe instead of repeating the same record.
On Deathwestern, I produced, engineered, and mixed the record, and contributed guitar, bass, and drums. For Helldorado, SpiritWorld took most of 2024 off from touring specifically to come back to The Panda Studios and make another record together.
What Happened
And Then The Record Became A Product
The guitar sounds we developed making Deathwestern didn't disappear when the sessions ended. We turned the actual amp chain and tones from the record into a commercial Purafied Audio plugin.
Demos → record → band → label deal → touring → three-album universe → audio software.
I build weird shit.
Stu came in with an idea that was too ambitious to treat like a normal band making a normal album. So we didn't. We built the arrangements. We built the performances. We built the tones. We brought in the right musicians. We built the records. And eventually, those records helped build SpiritWorld itself.
Sometimes I don't just help make the record. I help build the entire fucking thing around it.