One of the most intense concert experiences I’ve ever had was at the 2002 Cornerstone Festival, when Wovenhand took the stage late one night. During the band’s set, Edwards rocked back and forth, stared down members of the audience, and seemed to be channeling the Holy Ghost through his primal vocals. It was a spellbinding performance that was perfectly at home with the band’s brooding music.

Two years later, Edwards and Wovenhand would release their best album, Consider the Birds. Over the course of ten songs, Edwards contemplates his mortality and insignificance while expressing his complete and utter reliance on God’s sovereignty. The album’s opening lines (“Holy king cause my skin to crawl/Away from every evil thing”) underscores that desperation while “Bleary Eyed Duty” reveals God’s hand in his marriage (“It is a comfort for me to know/You will it that I need her”). But even with all of Edwards’ references to God’s sovereignty and his own weakness, this is very far from meek or timid music.

Wovenhand taps into the same dark take on Americana as Edwards’ previous project, 16 Horsepower, but expands on that sound with drones and loops that imbue it with an exotic, otherworldly tenor. Nowhere is that better displayed than “To Make a Ring,” which finds Edwards proclaiming “Power glory and dominion/Be unto the King… We will weave our voice together and sing/Forever ’round the throne” against a backdrop of spectral violins and tribal drumming.

Along with the rest of Consider the Birds, it’s some of the darkest praise and worship music ever recorded, especially when Edwards announces that “judgement will not be avoided by your unbelief” in that inimitable howl of his. But it’s never less than deeply reverent.