”The Mortal Prophets isn’t a band but rather the alter-ego for auteur John Beckmann. Imagine the darker side of Depeche Mode fronting Nick Cave, and you’re at least in the ballpark. Beckmann returns from the hair-frying intensity of his previous release, Me and the Devil, with a follow-up that sticks to a similar sonic blueprint, i.e., radically interpreting old, often traditional, songs by keeping the lyrics and discarding any melodies you might once have associated with them while adding an often-disturbing dose of electronics.”
- American Songwriter
Driving that idea even deeper is a spectral figure who may or may not be real—a “born-again carnival barker or repentant preacher” who opens the record by warning “all the demons in hell,” as if he alone can wrestle the darkness back into its cage. The language crackles like an apocalyptic tent revival gone off the rails, thunder shaking the windows while someone swears salvation is still possible.
“I’m interested in building a deep sonic atmosphere,” Beckmann says. “There’s a certain uncanny quality in the music—my love of German cinema from the ’20s, Werner Herzog, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kenneth Anger… films that contain magic.”
And like any magician, he isn’t ready to reveal every sleight of hand. This fall, the multi-medium artist (Axis Mundi Design) unveils a widescreen LP that expands the Mortal Prophets mythos and loops back to his own past—a club-hopping kid from New Jersey who chased strange sounds. “I was the weird teenager who bought experimental records at the mall,” Beckmann recalls. “The staff would set aside German and French electronica—CAN, NEU!, Cluster & Eno. And Throbbing Gristle, Conrad Schnitzler, Richard Pinhas, Cabaret Voltaire.”
By the early ’80s, he was living downtown, studying design at Parsons, folded into the New Wave fraternity—a fearless, Joseph Beuys-obsessed tribe that sweated through the Mudd Club, Danceteria, and Area.
In many ways, Stomp the Devil is the record he was destined to make—threading the needle through every phase of his life. In 2021, Beckmann began working with producer David Sisko, who brought in the legendary guitarist Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart, Gods and Monsters, Jeff Buckley). Lucas became crucial to shaping the Mortal Prophets’ sound: a warped transmission of raw, pre-war blues inspired by the John Fahey compilation American Primitive, Vol. I: Raw Pre-War Gospel (1926–36).
“It contains some of the most incredible, obscure early blues,” Beckmann says. “It sounds alien—the lyrics are mesmerizing. It’s America’s primal scream.”
Mortal Prophets takes that primal template and hurls it into another universe—fractured riffs, laser-bright synths, songs you want at last call, when the night refuses to end. And judging by what Beckmann has waiting in the wings, this is only the opening invocation.
John Beckmann doesn’t waste any time setting the scene in the opening salvo of his Mortal Prophets debut, Stomp the Devil. As the sky turns black, a sinister rainstorm slides across the horizon, and lightning cuts through its inky canvas like Death’s scythe — a not-so-subtle warning to step away from your speakers or succumb to Beckmann’s raw, ominous sound.