You were only going out for a jog. Just a nice, innocent jog. Your first in a long while too. You also thought this would be the perfect excuse to listen to that Natasha Khan from Bat for Lashes’ new album. You like her. She’s nice. So you loaded SEXWITCH, the collaboration between Khan and British psychedelic band Toy on to your seven year-old iPod Shuffle, you put in your earphones and headed out for a gentle run around the woods situated just a few hundred metres away from your house.
Upon entering the rough terrain of the woods you immediately hear a menacing percussion emanating from a clearing. It’s followed by the indistinct wail of tribal chanting; a vocal as seductive as it is chilling. You stop when you reach the clearing, you crouch down low and move a branch that’s obscuring your view.
A half-naked priestess wearing strips of leather and a mask made from a goat’s skull dances maniacally around a grim totem of malformed faces. Surrounding the priestess are her long-haired acolytes, faces covered in paint, each carrying an identical mark carved into the flesh of their backs.
Tied to the totem is your wife, her face contorted in fear, her breasts exposed to the cool morning mist. The priestess holds up a large ornate knife to your wife’s throat, threatening to slit her neck from ear to ear.
You scream. You run into the clearing hoping to save her life. The priestess spins around to face you. Your wife releases an inhuman cackle. The priestess takes off her mask, revealing the face of your beloved. You look to the totem. The human form you thought was your wife is nothing but the corpse of a freshly butchered pig. Your wife laughs as she plunges the knife deeply into your heart. She repeatedly stabs away at your chest. As the light fades, the sound of oppressively hypnotic drumming is replaced by the sound of your own blood making its final, fitful pumps around your body until there is nothing.
And that my friends is why you should never go jogging.
Sorry, I forgot what I was reviewing. Yeah, SEXWITCH then… it’s fucking awesome, sounds exactly like the above, and in a week full of bland, homogenised dance music, it’s a ferocious, shrieking, hypnotic relief.
Check out all the latest music releases in our new album reviews section, including Clutch’s Psychic Warfare.
