Blessings Bestrewn Part 1 is the new full-length from Morgan Y. Evans’ project Walking Bombs, landing June 20 after a drawn-out, cross-country process.
Mostly tracked in upstate New York in 2022 before Evans moved to California, the album sat in progress for months before finally coming together with help from longtime collaborator Ash Umhey, who co-produced, mixed, and mastered the record at Orange Sound in Rhinebeck.
The record brings together a loose group of guests from bands like Book of Wyrms, Gridfailure, Shadow Witch, Globelamp, Chrome Waves, Geezer, Black Mesa, and others. Most parts were recorded independently by contributors, using whatever setups were available—including a vocal tracked in a shower.
Evans plays a long list of instruments—guitars, bass, trombone, organ, keys, percussion—and wrote much of the material himself. One track dates all the way back to 1993, from his first teenage band in Woodstock.
The single “Mirror Mosh,” featuring John Fay (Black Mesa), Ash Umhey, David Brenner (Gridfailure), and Justin Zipperle (Shadow Witch), opens with cricket samples—Evans’ way of nodding at the feeling of yelling into a void. “It is about Nazis and crybullies pretending they have thicker skin, essentially,” he says.
The track was influenced by a post from Contrapoints about online burnout and digital self-worth erosion. “Everyone is such a hater nowadays… Go out and build something cool. Be the change you want to see and look in the mirror through your own eyes, not through distorted troll insults.”
The full record runs through themes like performative cruelty, broken relationships, gender identity, mythology, and personal loss. In Evans’ words, the album is “a bridge between East to West for me and a reminder to be glad for the candles and good moments along the way.”
Below is his full track-by-track breakdown:
1. “Mirror Mosh” – A song about the internet distorting our sense of self worth. People’s value and self expression degraded by insecure fascists and incels. Social Distortion is not only a great band name but also kind of summarizes the theme here, that people with shitty agendas have a vested interest in making you feel worse about being yourself.
2. “Shitical Darlings” – I will just say it. This song was written about Sam France from Foxygen who treated my partner Elizabeth like total shit when they were together and never apologized after serious harm. It is about people who have their egos stroked so much by fawning hipster media that they think it is ok to shit on people or be entitled and that their shit doesn’t stink.
3. “The Lonely Petition (Grace Remnants)” – I love this song so much. It is very Dax Riggs meets Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find inspired, but more about living low than being murdery. Jeff Wilson from Chrome Waves/ex Nachtmystium added gorgeous e bow guitar and Sarah Moore Lindsey from the incredible stoner psych band Book of Wyrms added almost gospel vocals to the bridge. It has that hurt people hurt people vibe and is about getting back up out of the dirt to face the sun.
4. “Sorrowful and Smoke” – This song is also about learning to live with regret and sorrow when you have been in the wrong and you wish you could fix it but can’t. Serenity prayer shit. Burning some sage and trying to let go with the smoke and move forward trying to be better and heal.
5. “Enby Soul Endogenous” – As a nonbinary person, we are indoctrinated to have imposter syndrome by a cis centric world that wants to call us frauds. This song was about how I feel trans folx are an extension of the Tower Of Babel parable. I had my catholic death metal friend Justin from Stormland channel Aborym and cyber metal/grind elements to make a song about how if language was initially a way to challenge us for hubris, perhaps an even wider lesson is that God has created much variety in nature and a huge spectrum of gender that people need to open their minds and hearts to if we want peace and real love. Also I want to shout out The Tower album by Everson Poe’s Mae Shults. I had this song idea before I heard that work but talked to Mae after hearing it about how interesting it is that as trans creatives we both felt a sense of exploration with Tower tarot and or Tower falling or ego death vs totalitarianism themes.
6. “Mountain Giantess” – A warning not to mess with Mother Nature. A reclusive wilderness mythical giantess taking revenge as cities and pollution encroach on her domain.
7. “Lizard Boy” – Written in 1993 in my first Woodstock, NY teen band Melancholy but never recorded until now! Basically my own version of a “Slither” song like Nirvana. Like, let me be a slacker pothead teenager type song and figure my shit out. Now you can hear it thirty years later, hahaha. I never played a guitar solo before but remembered my old guitarist Chris Holseapple’s solo from memory as close as I could!
8. “Salient: Arbalest Ov Thanx And Sleep” – I sang this in an empty shower while Lizzie was having a philosophical conversation with Jai from Outspoken in the next room. Ash wrote all the music under this super lo fi vocal and it is a stunner. I wanted to make a progressive emo song kind of Led Zep III inspired about life speeding by, depression and how we build personal mythologies that can supercede common decency. Also frankly it is somewhat but not strictly about how I wish I could heal a long running emotional rift with childhood friend Claudio Sanchez.
9. “Cura Animarum Part 1: Inner Child Thrown Down A Well” – This song is influenced by trying to reclaim innocence lost and the inner child in a harsh, disorienting world that often invites self destruction as a way to cope. It also was inspired by Samara Morgan in The Ring.
10. “Blessings Bestrewn” – I had this song forever. The false confidence of the entertainment industry and fool’s gold. How dreams can be manipulated. How good people get hurt. Ash added Rhodes and vintage synth over my acoustic and sparse vocal and it sounds so fucking cool, humble brag. It came out better than I ever imagined. So catchy too. Very much a count your blessings because all that glitters isn’t gold song/”shatter your illusions…” kind of “Gold Dust Woman” type song.
