Ethel Cain’s debut, 2022’s ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, stays one of the vital obsessed-over albums of the last decade, a collection of southern-gothic homicide ballads narrated by a girl already useless. Whereas followers await the following chapter in Hayden Anhedönia’s Daughter of Cain saga, ‘Perverts’ is one thing else fully. Alternately billed as a mission and an (considerably tongue-in-cheek) 89-minute EP, it comprises little of the acquainted – and what’s recognisable is chilling in its personal method.
The title monitor opens ‘Perverts’ with a distorted take of the hymn ‘Nearer My God to Thee’, earlier than any sense of sunshine fades away. What follows is a 12-minute drone with queasy, bell-like synth tones and low-intoned spoken phrase – “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator / It’s taking place to everyone”. 4 different tracks are in an analogous vein: the churning industrial loop of ‘Housofpsychoticwomn’, the electrical-buzz violin of ‘Pulldrone’, and the guitar wall of ‘Thatorchia’ harking back to ’90s shoegaze band Lovesliescrushing. Some ambient music is heat and enveloping, however these are brutalist – evoking the awe and dread of witnessing huge, untouchable constructions within the distance.
Within the remaining 4 songs, Anhedönia’s comfortable vocals deliver moments of reduction – however even these really feel like skeletal variations of her earlier work. ‘Vacillator’ is a minimalist nation ballad harking back to Duster, whereas ‘Amber Waves’ is the slowest of slowcore – a desolate, virtually apathetic portrait of dependancy. In every of those songs, she sings of craving for love and the coldness of its absence. Most extreme is the lead single ‘Punish’, written from the attitude of a youngster molester in self-imposed isolation, which she delivers with out distance or judgement – drawing no strains between sufferer and perpetrator, narrator and character, magnificence and abject horror.
‘Perverts’ has not one of the musical catharsis or divine absolution of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, however it will be false to say that its bleakness is absolute. In ‘Pulldrone’, Anhedönia recites her “12 pillars of simulacrum” philosophy – the concept that humanity’s need to the touch god and supreme incapability to achieve enlightenment can deliver transient moments of reduction or be a pathway to self-annihilation.
Equally, what could sound like a bowel-rattling drone to 1 could result in a transcendent expertise in others. Informal followers could not final even three minutes. However for many who are keen to take a seat with its discomfort, ‘Perverts’ reveals hidden depths – the identical method that eyes want time to regulate to low gentle. What it displays is within the eye of the beholder.
Particulars
- Launch date: January 8, 2025
- Report label: Daughters of Cain Information