Dax Riggs’ cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” on Say Goodnight to the World clocks in at almost four and a half minutes; Elvis Presley’s 1956 version takes just over two. Riggs slows the song’s pace and reduces its instrumental palette to heavy bass, sparse drums and a guitar melody crackling just on the edge of feedback, making “Heartbreak Hotel” appear unfamiliar because it’s been robbed of Elvis’ pop sensibilities. When the volume swells over the chorus, we can hear that a song we’ve always known to be about death and loneliness is, well, downright spooky.

“Heartbreak Hotel” is the only cover song on Say Goodnight to the World, but from “Gravedirt on My Blue Suede Shoes” to “See You All in Hell or New Orleans,” Riggs makes it his business to darken rock ’n’ roll’s lighthearted iconography. The album’s nine original songs load up rock music with ideas about death, hell and the road there. Those ideas, Riggs seems to remind us, are built right into the tradition. Such gloomy images are familiar from the singer’s earlier career with Acid Bath, Agents of Oblivion, and Deadboy and the Elephantmen, but as a solo artist Riggs continues to move away from playing metal. In place of the overloaded, distorted feel that we might expect from its lyrical content, this CD puts forth a more spacious, psychedelic soundscape. Say Goodnight to the World is aggressively spare, relying primarily on rhythmic, repetitive bass lines to push its groove along. It’s designed to both create and accentuate wide-open spaces where its compositions, along with its listener, can get lost in the dark.