Butcher House

Butcher House - Sematary

By Elizabeth Pulsonetti

An underground musician from California, Sematary is slowly but surely approaching the mainstream, with his music becoming more and more popular and appreciated. Part of the music collective Haunted Mound, much of his music is horrorcore trap, with witch house influences. Many of the lyrics in his songs deal with the same subject matter; violence, sex, and drugs. This year, he released a mixtape-style album titled Burcher House, with plenty of features from other Haunted Mound members such as Hackle, Buckshot, and Turnabout. 

Butcher House is introduced by its album art, portraying Sematary holding a chainsaw in front of, you guessed it, the butcher house. This album art provides a look into the feeling of the album right off the bat. The first song, Haunted Mound Reapers, features Hackle, and was previously released as a single in 2022. It is a great opening track to the album, and it just gets better from there. There are twelve tracks on this album, with the best being Hallowed Be My Wrist. However, all of the tracks on this album are pretty good. This album is quite consistent up until the very end with the last couple of tracks. While the majority of the tracks were high-energy and loud, the last couple of tracks mellow out just a little bit. The last track on the album, Little Lamb, is a slower ballad-ish song compared to Sematary’s usual music. All of the songs throughout, however, have the same feeling in terms of beats and lyrics, continuing the themes of drugs, sex, murder, violence, and the occult. There are some religious themes in this album, presented in songs throughout. The album is also riddled with pop culture references to video games such as Silent Hill, and movies such as The VVitch. 

Haunted Mound Reapers, the first track, is very obviously influenced by Chief Keef, with repeated metallic laughter coming from Sematary. Hackle’s voice adds to the track, and his bars are very fitting to the energy of the song. Overall, it’s pretty solid. This trend is continued with the next track, Babayaga. Beginning with a sample of a 1955 movie, this song has its fair share of interesting moments, and it isn’t anything special, but it still has a good feel to it. This can also be said about In Tha Field Where I Found U, which is also not the most interesting song on the album, but it also has a good feeling in my ears. However, the next song, Suffer, is actually quite good, and it features another Haunted Mound member, Buckshot. This song features lots of religious imagery of Jesus, demons, and Satan, which all fits with the energy of the song. Sematary’s vocals are heavily autotuned as per usual, and Buckshot’s verse is actually really good. Next, possibly the best song on the album, is the fifth track, Hallowed Be My Wrist, featuring Sickboyrari, Turnabout, and Hackle. All of the features on this song really fit nicely, and Turnabout has some absolutely insane bars about his True Religion jeans. The transition from Turnabout’s verse to Hackle’s verse was also very cool, and it was executed really nicely. Hate And Gasoline was a less heavy song on the album, yet it still had a lot of weight, and it was very enjoyable. Smokin Out Da Grave is a pretty good song on the album, and it begins very eerily but ends up being quite heavy and interesting. The eighth track on the album, We Don’t Dial 911, is actually really good, and should not be confused with We Don’t Dial 911, which is a song off of Rainbow Bridge 2, a different album by Sematary. Angelmakers is a song featuring Turnabout, and it’s a really awesome song that Turnabout’s vocals and lyricism fit into very well.

The next song I will not name, but it’s about committing arson, and it’s just okay. Then, there’s Go Dig My Grave, which took heavy inspiration from a different song by Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson, which it also samples. Finally, there’s Little Lamb, which was previously mentioned. This song was quite good even though it didn’t really fit with the rest of the songs as much. 

Overall, this album is really great. This is the kind of music to turn your headphones really loud and blast your eardrums out to.