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====== Hell's Advocate ======

{{ :albums:hells_advocate.jpg?400|}}

**Hell's Advocate** is the ninth album by [[characters:KingCobraJFS]], released through [[characters:Deathbed Tapes]] on October 31st, 2019. It is one of the most important albums in Cobra's discography, not necessarily because of its musical quality, but because it was his **first album released through Deathbed Tapes**, giving Josh's music a more concrete underground-label presentation than his earlier self-published releases.

The album consists of ten tracks and runs for approximately **54 minutes and 58 seconds**. Deathbed Tapes described the release under tags such as experimental, harsh noise, industrial, noise, power electronics, and harsh noise wall. This is both an extremely charitable genre classification and probably the most accurate possible way to frame Cobra's music without inventing a new genre called "Autistic GarageBand Warlock Metal".

===== Background and Production =====

The origin of **Hell's Advocate** is closely tied to [[incidents:Cobra gets SWATTED]] and the beginning of Josh's relationship with [[characters:Deathbed Tapes]]. On August 23rd, 2019, during the same livestream in which Josh would eventually be SWATted, he reviewed Deathbed Tapes' website and listened to some of their material. The label's output was experimental enough that Josh seemed to recognize a kindred artistic spirit, or at least a place where his own music might plausibly belong.

During that stream, Josh previewed **Smoking Cannabis in the Clock Tower** and teased **Don't Blame the Devil**, both of which would appear on Hell's Advocate. The stream would later be remembered more for the police response than the music, but it also marked the beginning of the Deathbed-era Cobra discography.

Shortly afterward, Deathbed's Alex Ford sent Josh a care package. In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fygpeZyxgo|fan mail]], Josh read a note from Ford thanking him for reviewing Deathbed Tapes. The note said Deathbed released metal and industrial music as well as super-experimental material, and that Ford was excited to release **Hell's Advocate** whenever Josh sent the tracks. Ford also promised Josh a cut of the profits and said he would send a tape player once the album was released.

This was a major validation point for Josh. Earlier albums were generally self-published, uploaded, lost, or treated as comedy by fans. Deathbed Tapes gave Josh something closer to a real label relationship, complete with Bandcamp sales, cassette releases, and merchandise. For someone who had long imagined himself as a legitimate gothic rock star, this was not a small thing.

===== Music and Lyrics =====

Hell's Advocate is musically consistent with much of Cobra's output: improvised guitar, muddy recording, gothic imagery, vocal rambling, crude mixing, and a sincere belief that what is happening is much closer to heavy metal than it actually is. The Deathbed Tapes framing places it near noise, industrial, and power electronics, which arguably works better than calling it straightforward rock or metal.

Thematically, the album is extremely Cobra. Its track titles include Satanic imagery, weed references, magical self-mythology, love pain, and the [[objects:Gothic Clocktower Dream House|clock tower]]. **Smoking Cannabis in the Clock Tower** is perhaps the most immediately Cobra-coded title on the album, combining weed, magic, gothic architecture, and Josh's lifelong fantasy of owning a clocktower mansion.

**Don't Blame the Devil** and **Hell's Fire** fit into Josh's long-running anti-Christian, pro-Satanic self-image, while **Demon Wings** and **666** lean into the darker gothic-magical persona he often tried to project. In a later video, Josh described **Demon Wings** as using the caw of a crow followed by the deeper caw of a raven, explaining that he liked the sound and would have a pet raven if he could afford one.

There are also traces of Josh's usual relationship misery. **Love's Pain**, featuring DJ Ray, belongs to the same general emotional universe as many of his dry-spell rants and anti-gender-relations monologues. As with most Cobra albums, the lyrics are less important as poetry than as documentation of what was in Josh's head at the time: Satan, weed, women, trolls, magic, and himself.

===== Track Listing =====

All music written by Joshua "KingCobraJFS" Saunders.

^ No. ^ Title ^ Length |
|1|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/lifes-same-old-tricks|Life's Same Old Tricks]]|7:57|
|2|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/devils-advocate-feat-xander-beats-and-lleni-mirk-official|Devil's Advocate (feat. Xander Beats and Lleni Mirk Official)]]|7:42|
|3|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/hit-the-blunt-and-get-faded|Hit the Blunt and Get Faded]]|4:31|
|4|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/smoking-cannabis-in-the-clock-tower|Smoking Cannabis in the Clock Tower]]|4:21|
|5|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/matter|Matter]]|5:37|
|6|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/hells-fire|Hell's Fire]]|4:06|
|7|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/dont-blame-the-devil|Don't Blame the Devil]]|5:40|
|8|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/loves-pain-feat-dj-ray|Love's Pain (feat. DJ Ray)]]|5:38|
|9|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/demon-wings|Demon Wings]]|5:44|
|10|[[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/666|666]]|3:42|

===== Physical release =====

Hell's Advocate received a cassette release through Deathbed Tapes, making it one of the more tangible Cobra albums. Josh heavily promoted the physical version, especially once the tapes began selling. In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFEZl4t_xQg|8 tapes left]], he told viewers that the album was available on cassette and that there were only about eight copies left. He also promoted Hell's Advocate shirts using the album cover art, saying the shirts looked sick and would be a good way to support his channel and music.

Josh later received copies of the album in a Deathbed Tapes package and reacted with obvious pride, calling it "my album" and suggesting that the tapes might be worth money someday. In typical Cobra fashion, he also floated the idea of signing copies with a white marker and giving them away.

Some later resale and catalogue listings identify a second edition with different art and a clear-shell cassette, suggesting that Hell's Advocate had more than one physical variant. This is more than can be said for most of Josh's earlier albums, many of which either disappeared, were only preserved by reuploads, or existed mainly as cursed TuneCore/iTunes uploads.

===== Release and promotion =====

Hell's Advocate was released on Halloween 2019, a fittingly gothic date for one of Cobra's most Satan-coded albums. According to the [[sagas:The Ellen Saga]] page, this was the ninth album released by KingCobraJFS and his first album published through Deathbed Tapes.

This timing is important. The album came out during the aftermath of [[incidents:Cobra gets SWATTED]], when Josh's YouTube presence was becoming increasingly centered around livestreaming, donations, and his reputation as a local internet spectacle. Rather than retreating after the SWATting, Josh leaned into the attention. The Deathbed release gave him a way to frame that attention as artistic momentum.

In later years, during memorial discussion after Josh's death, Clint reportedly identified the Deathbed Tapes album release as one of Josh's proudest accomplishments. This makes sense. For all the mockery surrounding Cobra's music, a real cassette label taking his work seriously enough to release it was probably one of the closest things Josh ever had to the rock-star validation he wanted.

===== The fake mass-shooting article =====

One of the more infamous pieces of Hell's Advocate-related trolling involved a fake news article. According to later community discussion, trolls created or circulated a fake React365-style article claiming that someone had committed a school shooting after listening to Josh's new album, Hell's Advocate. Josh encountered the fake article and was predictably furious.

This prank appears to have contributed to Josh's later habit of loudly denouncing mass shootings whenever the subject came up. A Kiwi Farms post discussing the event states that this was likely the origin of the recurring **#FuckMassShootings** bit in Cobra's content.

The prank is notable because it demonstrates how even an album release could be folded into troll warfare. Josh wanted Hell's Advocate to be treated as a serious musical accomplishment. Instead, trolls tied it to one of his most sensitive topics, baiting him into another moral panic and giving the community another clipable reaction.

===== Reception and Criticism =====

As with most of Cobra's music, Hell's Advocate was received by the Cobraverse less as a conventional album and more as an artifact. Fans did not generally praise it because the guitar playing was good or the vocals were strong. They praised it, when they did, because it was unmistakably Cobra: sincere, strange, unpleasant, funny, delusional, and deeply tied to his personal mythology.

There was some ironic appreciation outside the immediate Cobra community. A post on r/BlackMetal titled [[https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackMetal/comments/keepgi/king_cobra_hells_advocate_true_raw_wampyric/|KING COBRA - Hell's Advocate (True Raw Wampyric Darkness)]] framed the album as a kind of raw black metal oddity. In the comments, one user mentioned owning the cassette, while the original poster singled out **Smoking Cannabis in the Clock Tower** as a personal favorite.

This kind of reception is important to understanding the album's legacy. Hell's Advocate was not being embraced as polished music. It was being appreciated as outsider art, lolcow ephemera, or "true raw wampyric darkness" in the most tongue-in-cheek sense possible. For Josh, however, any attention given to the music could be interpreted as proof that King Cobra JFS was making it in the underground.

Critically, the album has all the usual Cobra problems: poor mixing, wandering song structures, limited musicianship, lyrics that often collapse into ranting, and a production style that sounds like it was assembled in a haunted bedroom by a drunk wizard with GarageBand. However, those same traits make it one of the more distinctive releases in his catalogue. It is not good in a normal way, but it is very Cobra in a way few people could replicate intentionally.

===== Legacy =====

Hell's Advocate is one of the most historically important Cobra albums because it marks the beginning of the Deathbed Tapes era. Later releases such as [[albums:Cobra's Crude Christmas Carols]], [[albums:Satan's Bell]], [[albums:King Cobra's Comedy Album]], [[albums:Blunt Wraps & Cobra Coils]], and others would continue this relationship, but Hell's Advocate was the first proof that Josh's music could exist as something more than a deleted YouTube upload or a forgotten iTunes oddity.

It also captures a specific version of Josh: late South Center / early Deathbed-era Cobra, still making wands, still obsessed with Tactical Soap, still chasing gothic validation, still ranting about trolls, and newly energized by the idea that an experimental label wanted to publish his work. Coming shortly after the SWATting, it helped turn a chaotic and frightening period of Josh's life into one of his biggest attention spikes.

For listeners who want polished music, Hell's Advocate is nearly impossible to recommend. For anyone trying to understand the Cobraverse, it is essential. It is the sound of Josh Saunders being handed a small piece of legitimacy and immediately using it to ring the bells of Hell from Casper, Wyoming. That's most definitely what's up.

===== Sources cited =====

  - [[https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/album/hells-advocate|Hell's Advocate on Deathbed Tapes Bandcamp]]
  - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6CPecAwdE|King Cobra JFS - "Hell's Advocate" (complete album)]]
  - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fygpeZyxgo|fan mail]] - Deathbed Tapes care package and Alex Ford note.
  - [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFEZl4t_xQg|8 tapes left]] - Josh promotes the cassette and album-cover shirts.
  - [[https://apolloexos.com/products/king-cobra-hells-advocate|Apollo Exos cassette listing]]
  - [[https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackMetal/comments/keepgi/king_cobra_hells_advocate_true_raw_wampyric/|r/BlackMetal post on Hell's Advocate]]
  - [[https://kiwifarms.st/threads/kingcobrajfs-josh-saunders.22713/page-171|Kiwi Farms page 171]] - discussion of the fake mass-shooting article prank.
  - [[incidents:Cobra gets SWATTED]]
  - [[sagas:The Ellen Saga]]

{{page>:blurbs#Albums}}