El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa is the second full-length album from Wisconsin-based Slackeye Slim. This follow-up to their 2007 debut, Texas Whore Pleaser, is the brainchild of bandleader Joe Frankland in collaboration with singer/songwriter Graham Lindsey. The fourteen tracks of the concept album tell the story of a young man whose quest for truth leads him on a divine mission, assisted by the mysterious revolver.

In El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, a great departure from their previous effort, Frankland's trademark baritone howl sounds like the world-weary ghost of Johnny Cash backed by a band of Apache holy men and Mexican gunfighters, lost on a peyote trip in Death Valley.

The album draws from numerous inspirations, including the music of Leonard Cohen, Calexico, and Devotchka, the writing of Harry Crews and the films of Jim Jarmusch and Akira Kurosawa. To further influence the album’s unique tone, recording took place at a number of makeshift studios in Montana, from an old mansion in Anaconda to a junkyard in Bozeman and the Museum of Fine Arts in Butte.

Though intentionally sporadic over the course of the entire album,El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa stays surprisingly grounded and shows a vast maturity in the writing, recording and organization of the tracks, which not only sets it apart from other concept albums but ranks it up with Murder By Death's In Bocca al Lupo and Johnny Cash’s The Rambler.