"The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton" just might be the best ever tribute to death metal on record.

The song, the first on the Mountain Goats' new All Hail West Texas, is in many ways just like all of Mountain Goat John Darnielle's recorded output: strummed acoustic guitar recorded into a hissing, rattling Panasonic cassette deck.

But the very audible wheel grinding from inside the Panasonic combines with Darnielle's reverent love for the hair bands of his adolescence to take the track to celestial heights.

If Bruce Springsteen were hip, didn't have a backing band and bellowed "Hail Satan" at the end of songs with the guttural might of a television evangelist, "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton" is what he'd produce.

Darnielle's Mountain Goats recordings don't explicitly sound like Springsteen, but it shares the narrative style and reverence for blue-collar life found in Springsteen's early work. In fact, "Death Metal Band" even sounds a bit like "Born to Run," and its tale of three suburban kids thirsting for fame evokes how Springsteen used to pen.

The rest of All Hail West Texas lives up to its opener's promise. The detailing of the girl in "Color In Your Cheeks" is as vivid as Bob Dylan's lyrics on "Visions of Johanna." The entire album is a perfect snapshot of suburbia. Darnielle can paint pictures with words as well as anyone, and All Hail West Texas is proof.

-- Reviewed by Justin Stranzl