Winter Is Coming for Ancient Gods on New Doom-Folk Song

Game of Thrones is constantly talking about “the old gods and the new.” So, with the final season approaching this weekend, what appropriate timing for a new song about some other old gods. It’s not about House Stark or Lannister belief systems though, but the deities of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies, and how – historically-speaking – winter did indeed come for them.

The song is “The Myth Has Broken,” by Vermont singer-songwriter Bishop LaVey (Kane Sweeney to his friends). He describes his music as “doom-folk,” a genre label that’s pretty dead on. Over spare and echoing guitar, he hollers a deep guttural roar, bringing goth-rock undertones even when the instrumentation would otherwise read as Americana. After dropping an excellent album in February, he has already followed it up with this new single.

And what heavier topic for a heavy sound than ancient mythology. Specifically: how the Judeo-Christian belief system effectively murdered the old gods. “The song is implying that maybe the gods themselves never disappeared, just people stopped believing in them,” Sweeney says.

He says his passion for mythology goes back to childhood, when his mother would bring him magazines about ancient Egypt. A recent book on Norse mythology re-awakened that early interest. “The old world gods came flooding back in,” he says. “It still amazes me that these cultures that existed thousands of miles apart and divided by centuries could all have relatively the same belief system.”

Listen to Bishop LaVey’s “The Myth Has Broken” below, and check out more music on his Bandcamp.

Check out more of the best new folk music (doomy or not) from Vermont here.