St. Louis solo progressive death metal artist Daniel Bohn announces the release of his new album, Gallant Guest — out now on Sliptrick Records, marking his first release under the label and the next chapter in one of independent metal’s most ambitious solo storytelling projects.
Dark. Heavy. Fast — just like life.
Gallant Guest plunges headlong into some of the most difficult and resonant territories the human experience has to offer: love, mental illness, disease, and the mysteries that refuse to be resolved. Carried on a wave of death metal and progressive chaos, it is a record that doesn’t flinch from its subject matter and doesn’t ask for permission to be exactly what it is.
“Science is the magic of gods,” Bohn says. It is a line that captures the Gallant Guest worldview precisely — the intersection of the analytical and the mythological, the rational and the sublime, the crushing and the transcendent.
⇒ Check our thoughts on Daniel’s album here.
Gallant Guest is a concept album, following directly from Bohn’s previous record Colors of the Land and taking its narrative into a grimmer, darker, more war-torn territory. The story follows a god seeking revenge on another god — deploying a mortal character as an instrument of destruction against everything the targeted god loves. Once the main character begins to understand what is happening, the vengeful god turns to the land of mortals itself, corrupting and destroying it — and stripping away its most sacred symbol of courage and life: The Whale.
Two tracks anchor the album’s emotional and narrative arc. “The Red Blight” — the opening track — marks the beginning of the corruption, the moment the rot sets in. “Kujira” — the album’s closing piece — delivers the death of courage itself, the loss of the symbol that gave the world its meaning. Between those two poles, Gallant Guest is relentless, technically precise, and steeped in the kind of melancholy that, as one reviewer put it, is “created in a way never before.”
The album was written, performed, and recorded entirely by Bohn in St. Louis, with mixing and mastering handled by Dorian Falconeri. Every guitar, drum, piano, bass line, and vocal is his — a one-man operation of formidable scope and discipline.
Gallant Guest carries additional significance as Bohn’s first record under Sliptrick Records — a signing that marks a meaningful new chapter for an artist who has built his world entirely on his own terms. The label partnership brings his music to a broader international platform without compromising an ounce of the creative autonomy that defines the project.
Drawing from the progressive metal universe of Between the Buried and Me, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, and Persefone, Bohn’s sound is simultaneously indebted to the greats and entirely his own — progressive death metal from the gateway to the West, with a storytelling ambition that sets it apart from everything around it.
