It’s that time of year again when we gather together to put on campy body horror movies about experimental therapy and homicidal rage babies only to find, post-credits, that at least one person in your viewing party has inexplicably broken down in tears upon unconsciously relating to the near-subliminal source material for the film—mental illness, divorce, and a brutal custody battle—without entirely realizing it. It’s this allegorical form of storytelling that Sean Sprecher taps on his Halloween-weekend-released split with Nyxy Nyx titled Death Takes a Holiday, with the title track arriving today that pairs the familiar grunge-inspired slowcore of Sprecher’s Bad History Month project with lyrics personifying shame in an aptly haunting light.
“I wanted to try and write about unhappiness without a happy ending for once, but I didn’t quite pull it off,” he shares of the song, which he notes was inspired by his split-mate on the forthcoming record. “I do love talking shit though, and personifying shame as putrid, grasping zombie hands feels like a pretty good insult. This one’s got some cool sounds. I was sitting out back mixing and the birds were magnified through the headphones and almost in time with the song, so I recorded and chopped ’em. It also features the best distorted bongo solo I ever took, too. Bless this mess.”
It’s a good mess—listen below, and pre-order the split here.
