***Born out of a love for the post-industrial music and culture that had inspired him ever since he had first discovered music as a teenager, CULT OF YOUTH began as a series of home recordings by founder SEAN RAGON. Last year Ragon added three permanent members to the line-up: performance artist/ director/ painter/ occult scholar MICKI PELLERANO on bass, machinist drummer GLENN MARYANSKI, and the violin virtuoso/ goddess CHRISTINA KEY (Key’s brilliant string arrangements were recently featured on new Zola Jesus single “Poor Animal”). This album, their first as a proper band, is an amazing representation of how ideal this new full band line-up is. It is a neo-folk masterpiece, perhaps the first of its kind from an American band. Although still rooted in the acoustic guitar driven Teutonic chants of the early material, the focus has changed and the scope is broader. Cult of Youth shifts from delicate pagan folk music reminiscent of Paul Giovanni’s landmark soundtrack to The Wicker Man, to hazy Turkish psychedelic passages, and even to the rugged Americana of traditional country music. This debut is an unapologetic and unabashed search for a spiritual identity in an increasingly homogenized world. It serves as a clear and thorough introduction for all the burgeoning dark punks out there who wanna go a bit deeper but haven’t yet figured out where to start.