words by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photo by Andrew Dickinson

The mortal things in Kill County songs are material. Wheel wells rust out and crack. Glass shatters. Wood rots. Men, for their part, age ungracefully and depart the world just so.  By comparison, time is undefeated.

“Bridge washed out some time ago,” Josh James deeply mumbles in the first verse of “Beat Up Iron.”

And then, “[The] river didn’t notice …” The water flowed on, undeterred.

“Beat Up Iron” is the first release from Kill County’s forthcoming album, Broken Glass In The Sun, the follow-up to their 2013 record, Dust In Wire. Hear Nebraska premiered the track via HN Radio earlier this week and it’s currently available for download. However, no release date is scheduled yet for the album.

The mournful folk tune is par for the Kill County course, with the deep and clean production found on Dust In Wire. A major chord fingerpicking pattern expectedly bottoms out into minor acoustic chords, as James sings of time’s toll as a kind of penance. The past in Kill County songs is never legend or folklore; “the good old days” are just a blank, grassy space in the years before the land started swallowing up the humans and all the metal things they made. If things keep going this way, the future won’t look so different.

Enjoy the premiere of “Beat Up Iron” below: