Secret South is the fateful, disquieting fulfillment of the promise 16 Horsepower tendered on its first two releases, Sackcloth 'n' Ashes and Low Estate. On Sackcloth, we were witness to the emergence of a new Southern Gothic voice, the son of a traveling preacher whose lyrical mind was held in the terrifying sway of existent devils lapping at his soul. On Low Estate we heard David Eugene Edwards and his constant musical companion, Jean-Yves Tola, embody those terrors on a visceral plane of thundering percussion and weeping guitars, but the poetry seemed rushed, taking a back seat to musical fervor. Together, the albums offered confirmation -- authentic murmurs of passion and penance drenched in minor-key banjo and Edwards' eerie treble -- but alone they stood half-formed, dripping and premature, full of pretense.

With Secret South, the clicking tongues will be stilled. This is not an album created for exhibition: It is intimate and deep-seated, as private and perpetual as the bayous it inhabits. As always Edwards tills his family history for organic matter, but here an acceptance of his bloodline has been realized; by passing through the lower, quieter ranges of his voice he seems to absorb the lives of his kin, singing from within their psyches, rather than depending on the haunting remoteness of his wail to treat them as distant curiosities. Similarly, Edwards allows his exemplary banjo playing to give way to hesitant, timid picking that pulls at the ear like a whisper.

On "Wayfaring Stranger," a traditional folk song given a musical solitude and menace hitherto only implied by the lyrics, Edwards conjures the uncertainty and tentative hope of both the main character and the child who first heard the song. Despite the faint loping of a carnival-esque keyboard and the mention of rasping locusts and hammering church bells, "Silver Saddle" is the most straightforward song 16 Horsepower has recorded. "Her talkin' ain't like the other girls/ She takes my living at a glance," sings Edwards simply, with exhausted, evident gratefulness.

Personal moments aside, Secret South remains epic in proportion, with most of the songs awash in Gothic layers of pastoral orchestration and lyrics that invoke the heroic struggle between everyday man and the malevolent maw of sin. For the first time, though, Edwards sounds like he has actually walked through the mire. Abandoning the safety of the soapbox, he arrives among us with open palms and real stories to share.