The duo Until They Burn Me have never been interested in playing it safe. With their new 9-track album A Carnival of Reveries, released on October 31, 2025, Cody Carlyle and Travis Jordan deliver a darkly cinematic experience that feels part ghost story, part fever dream, and entirely their own. Equal parts Americana, gothic folk, garage rock, and backwoods punk, the record is a wild and unflinching exploration of sin, salvation, and the strange beauty that lives somewhere between them.
Although Until They Burn Me was formally born in 2021, Carlyle and Jordan’s creative bond stretches back more than 30 years. The two cut their teeth together in the cult band The Dry Season, and their shared history seeps through every note of this new release. Their connection gives the music its lived-in authenticity, like two old friends trading stories by the dying light of a barroom jukebox. A Carnival of Reveries is the sound of that friendship refined, weathered, and unchained.
The album opens with Dark & Deep, a swampy invocation that feels like the beginning of a ritual. The track creeps forward with heavy guitars and whispered vocals that seem to summon something ancient from the shadows. It’s an overture to the album’s recurring theme — the confrontation between light and dark within the human spirit. The tension is palpable, but rather than resolving it, the duo revel in it. The song’s haunting production and hypnotic rhythm set the tone for what follows: an unrelenting journey through desire, memory, and myth.
To the Bone sharpens that energy into something more immediate, driven by punk-tinged percussion and snarling guitar licks that evoke both Southern blues and underground garage rock. Carlyle’s voice cracks and strains with urgency, while Jordan’s harmonies wrap around him like a ghostly echo. The song feels like a confession spat into the void — raw, ragged, and undeniably real.
Then comes Licorice & Lollipops, a strange, playful, yet sinister detour that demonstrates the band’s knack for contrast. It’s a twisted lullaby that toys with sweetness and danger, much like the title itself. Behind the carnival melodies and cryptic lyrics lies a story about temptation and decay, a reminder that beauty and corruption often walk hand in hand. It’s these contradictions that give A Carnival of Reveries its haunting allure — every song feels like a dream half-remembered, teetering between pleasure and peril.
One of the album’s most cinematic moments arrives with Dig Them Graves, a dusty murder ballad wrapped in gothic storytelling. The track could easily soundtrack a lost Western or a Southern noir film. The duo’s love of traditional Americana runs deep here, but so does their punk sensibility — they strip the genre of sentimentality and inject it with grit and menace. Each verse feels carved out of folklore, full of ghosts and guilty men, with a melody that rolls like thunder across open plains.
Night Passage of Painted Dog drifts into experimental territory, a sound collage of reverb-drenched guitars and tribal percussion that evokes the heat and darkness of the desert. It’s a track that feels alive — humming, breathing, and restless. Revealed to Him in the Wild continues that thread, unfolding like a preacher’s sermon gone sideways. The lyrics are cryptic yet vivid, speaking of revelation and ruin in the same breath. The instrumentation builds gradually, layering fiddles, distorted slide guitar, and shuffling percussion until it collapses into a cathartic release.
The title track, White Devil, sits at the album’s heart and serves as its most striking statement. It’s a blistering anthem that explores themes of power, corruption, and identity with unflinching honesty. The song’s energy feels almost spiritual, channeling the fury of punk and the storytelling depth of folk into something both timeless and urgent. Carlyle spits each line with conviction while Jordan’s guitar howls behind him like a warning siren. The result is an unholy fusion of blues lament and punk rebellion — a sound that could only belong to Until They Burn Me.
The Golden Motel Room shifts the mood again, stripping things down to a smoky, melancholic blues that aches with nostalgia. The lyrics evoke a scene straight out of a faded photograph — cheap motel lights, lost love, the ghosts of decisions past. It’s intimate and cinematic all at once, a brief respite before the closing track pulls the listener back into the storm.
The finale, Josef K, named after Kafka’s tragic hero, closes the album on a haunting note. The song feels like a descent into existential purgatory, where the walls of guilt and doubt close in from all sides. The instrumentation is sparse but evocative, allowing the vocals to carry the emotional weight. It’s a fitting end to an album obsessed with the struggle for meaning — a final reminder that even in the darkest corners, there’s a strange and defiant beauty.
Throughout A Carnival of Reveries, Carlyle and Jordan demonstrate an uncanny ability to balance chaos and control. Their sound is wild yet deliberate, their lyrics both poetic and blunt. The production captures that same duality — lo-fi grit meets cinematic depth. Every instrument sounds tactile and alive, from the twang of acoustic strings to the growl of electric distortion. It’s an album that feels hand-built, crafted from the dirt and sweat of real experience.
If there’s a single thread tying the album together, it’s the sense of motion — a relentless push toward revelation. Whether they’re drawing from folk, punk, or blues traditions, Until They Burn Me approach each song with fearless honesty. They understand that great storytelling isn’t about resolution, but about the tension between what’s revealed and what remains hidden.
A Carnival of Reveries isn’t just an album — it’s an exorcism. It’s a howl from the heart of the American night, filled with fire and dust, laughter and loss. Until They Burn Me have crafted something rare: a record that honors the ghosts of the past while sounding like nothing else in the present. With its blend of grit, poetry, and raw emotion, A Carnival of Reveries stands as a testament to what happens when two lifelong collaborators channel every ounce of their history into something fiercely, beautifully alive.
