Agnostic Phibes and the Rhythm and Blood Conspiracy will bend your brain in two.
They made their Lethbridge debut at the Slice, Dec. 10 for a respectable crowd of approximately 50 people.
Steve Foord and Kelsey Jesperson performing their first gig together as Red Rum Triumph, began the show with a long, laid back set of folk type music featuring an array of instruments and weird microphones. Jesperson switched between fiddle and cello and sang harmony vocals with Foord, who alternated between guitar and mandolin.
They were a. Just as they were ending their set of mostly original music plus a Radiohead cover, they played a request for Foord’s version of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” on mandolin.
Everybody was waiting for the unofficial CD release party for Agnostic Phibes Rhythm and Blood Conspiracy’s debut CD “Campfire Tales.”
They are officially releasing the CD next month.
The band, blends most of the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir with longstanding Calgary horror punk band the Forbidden Dimension’s frontman Tom “Jackson Phibes” Bagley.
Their plodding set of spooky, creepy, dark and disturbing music ended up being a perfect melding of Forbidden Dimension’s horror-punk madness and the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir’s old school folk blues.
They basically played their CD from beginning to end, while retuning their guitars for a triad of dual slide guitar powered blues madness including my absolute favourite from the CD “ Windigo Song,”” which is based on The First Nations myth of Windigo which involves bad spirits possessing people and making them do bad things. 
In addition to the old blues and folk, mixed with a touch of menacing horror punk, they also reminded me of Hank and Lily.
One of many highlights was an upbeat Celtic tinged instrumental, “Wild Night Company,” featuring those smokin’ twin lead guitars.
They reworked a Forbiden Di
mension song as well as an Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir plus played a tribute to Screaming Jay Hawkins as well as Elmore James.
It was definitely an auspicious debut so I look forward to hearing them again, they are so unusual you just can’t take your eyes off them.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
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