Hallowed Butchery is ex-Las Vegan Ryan Fairfield, who used to operate Milkweed Records out of his Sahara Avenue apartment. He moved to Maine last year to regain his sanity after inhabiting the wasteland of Southern Nevada. His doom-metal project Hallowed Butchery’s debut CD, Funeral Rites for the Living, on Germany’s Vendetta Records, suggests he should return in order to pursue his nihilistic muse.

Recorded in his old Sahara digs, Funeral is the most ambitious doom-metal effort in years, and proves Fairfield capable of playing any instrument (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard). Butchery blends everything from Native American rhythms to pagan black metal to electronica to acoustic ’70s folk-pop. The latter is evident in a jaw-dropping cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” which accentuates the song’s post-apocalyptic lyrics and tacks on a bludgeoning metal interlude.

Butchery’s best moments, though, are in original compositions like “Kingdom (Within You),” an epic architecture of strummed chords, American Indian chants and tribal pounding. Equally remarkable is “Abolish the Pulpit,” which kicks off with an account of an exorcism taped off Christian radio and, well, it just gets worse in terms of decaying guitars and plane-crash drums. Production-wise, it’s amazing Funeral was created by one guy in a room. Butchery makes mincemeat of its doom-metal peers, and it’s Vegas’ loss that Fairfield fled Maine for real civilization. Visit http://hallowedbutchery.bigcartel.com to order.