The literary blog 96th of October has published a review of Strong Songs of the Dead. A truncated version reads:
"This is one of those wonderful ethnographic studies that is also a work of literature... Metzger offers a compelling account of his decades-long involvement with Sacred Harp singing... a loud orgy of rough-edged euphony that goes on for five hours at a stretch.
Only the vaguest notion of the sound may be gained by listening to recordings... the sound is complex, encompassing, and beyond the power of a microphone to pick up. Metzger is at some pains to view this as pagan, even Dionysian—with some borrowing from Nietzsche’s “Birth of Tragedy.”
Metzger searched for ecstasy and authenticity as far as Sand Mountain, Alabama, a conservative Baptist bastion where snake handling is not unknown, and where the tradition of Sacred Harp singing is at its oldest and most unbroken. This journey was determined in part by Metzger’s own somewhat luddite distaste for modern industrial culture... We are privileged to accompany, at a prudent remove, his obsessive, long-term flirtation with spiritual outsiderism."
Read the full review at their website.