Released on July 25th 2025, God of the Dead is Rosetta West’ s latest full-length, emerging from Chicago’s underground blues-rock soil. The album offers a sprawling 15-track odyssey shaped by psychedelia, mysticism, and gritty roots. It’s both ambitious and deeply atmospheric: a record that quietly refuses to sit still
Consistently exploring mortality, mythology, and existential wanderlust, God of the Dead weaves blues rock with folk-world rhythm and fractured dreamscapes. It doesn’t dwell in darkness, it dances with it. Across its runtime, the album walks a fine line between ritualistic ambiance and rock‑n‑roll grit.
Track Highlights
The album includes 15 tracks, a bold stretch that unfolds like a late-night ritual. Here’s a curated walk-through of some of the standout songs.
“Underground”
“Underground” pushes forward with restless energy, carried by a rhythm that feels like footsteps in a tunnel. The bass walks steady while the guitar keeps throwing sparks against the walls. The vocal doesn’t overplay emotion, instead letting the words hit hard in a casual way. It is a song about motion, about digging deeper instead of staying safe at the surface. By the end, you feel pulled further into the shadows of the album.
“I Don’t Care”
Here the attitude sharpens. The riff is dirty, almost punk in its simplicity, and the vocal spits the lyric with a shrug that turns into defiance. There’s something freeing about its bluntness; it refuses to dress itself up or apologize. The track works because it doesn’t try to be clever. It’s a fist slammed on the table, and sometimes that’s exactly what you want in a blues-rock record.
“Chain Smoke”
This one hangs heavy in the air, its groove slow and deliberate, like smoke curling toward a ceiling fan. The harmonica and guitar twist around each other, both sounding just a little ragged, and the vocal slides into that haze with a confessional tone. You can feel the exhaustion in the phrasing, as though every line is an exhale. It is one of the most atmospheric songs on the album, and it lingers long after it ends.
“My Life”
“My Life” pares everything down. The arrangement is stripped bare, letting the vocal sit right at the front. The honesty in the delivery is what makes it stand out; there’s no hiding, no character mask, just a man laying out what he’s been through. It’s a song that doesn’t try to impress you, it just tells the truth, and that truth lands harder because of its simplicity.
“Baby Come Home”
After the weight of “My Life,” this track feels like a release. The lyric is straightforward, a plea wrapped in warmth, and the melody opens its arms wide. You get the sense of someone who is tired of running and just wants comfort again. It’s sweet, but not in a way that feels soft. Instead, it has the strength of someone willing to admit what they need.
“Dead Of Night”
This one kicks the pace back up, driven by urgent percussion and jagged guitar stabs. The lyrics are restless, caught in late-night wanderings, and the music mirrors that energy with a sense of chase. It’s rawer than some of the earlier tracks, and that looseness works. It feels like the kind of song that would hit harder live, where volume and sweat could push it to its breaking point.
“Thorns Of Beauty”
As the title suggests, this track explores contradictions. The melody is pretty, almost gentle, but there’s a sharpness under the surface. The lyric acknowledges how the things that draw us in can also leave scars, and the music mirrors that push and pull. It’s delicate without ever feeling fragile, a balancing act that works because it doesn’t lean too far either way.
“Midnight”
Here the band lets things breathe again. The arrangement sprawls, shifting in waves, and the vocal feels more like a chant than a straight melody. It’s hypnotic, almost ritualistic, and it pulls you into a dreamlike state. By the end, you don’t want it to end; it’s the kind of track you could get lost in.
Final Thoughts
The album’s alternation between short ambient sketches and long immersive tracks works like ritual sequencing. Tracks such as “Susanna Jones” and “Nightmare Blues” repeat motifs that structure the record as a mythic cycle rather than a standard track list. Listening to God of the Dead as a full piece reveals a journey from underworld blues to narrative myth and finally arrival into reflective clarity and emotional presence.
This is not casual background music. It demands engagement, quiet attention, and openness to uncanny storytelling. For listeners drawn to rich sonic environments, ritual mood, and lyrical myth making rooted in blues‑rock tradition, God of the Dead delivers cinematic intensity, deep atmosphere, and narrative texture in equal measure.
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