There’s a dirty little charge running through Someone To Blame, the kind that starts in the nerves, moves through the bloodstream, and winds up somewhere shameful. Holy Death Temple have made a track about power, appetite, coercion, performance, submission, and the awful old human habit of dressing domination up as comfort, then selling it back to the willing and the weary as a form of pleasure. It sounds academic on paper, but the song itself is no lecture. It lurches in with too much poise to be innocent, too much muscle to be casual, and from the first seconds it knows exactly where it wants your attention: somewhere between your hips and your conscience, with the skull rattling along behind trying to file an objection.
Holy Death Temple (Bryan Edward, Amy Tung-Barrysmith, and Jon Barrysmith) have stalked nearby ground before, especially on Algo-Rhythm Is Gonna Get You, but Someone To Blame tightens the focus and sharpens the blade. The trio’s style fuses the icy gloom of Joy Division and Bauhaus with the irreverent rage of Sex Pistols, then jolts the whole affair with a strain of digital decadence that calls to mind Daft Punk and Justice.
The song arrives with a breathy female voice that opens the door in a manner that feels warm, intimate, almost coaxing, and then, with a kind of calm cruelty, that invitation gives way to command. A presence steps forward and begins spelling out what it wants, how it intends to proceed, and what role it has already chosen for you. It moves with the slow authority of machinery built to press, stamp, crush, and keep going while the poor soul caught inside is still deciding whether this is ecstasy, terror, or some grubby alliance of the two.
Amy Tung-Barrysmith handles synth duties with the kind of force that turns the floor into a pressure plate, while Jon Barrysmith’s drumming keeps the track driving forward with a hard, relentless exactness. Over that foundation, the guitar cuts clean and sharp, spring reverb giving it a cold gleam without blunting the edge.
“There’s something for everyone on the dance floor,” says frontman Bryan Edward. “If you want an S&M-fueled goth club banger, we got you. If you want an intellectual parallel between S&M and the descent into fascism, we also got you.”
That line could have landed like a clever pitch, some quick bit of black-lipstick copy meant to sell the song’s angle, but in practice it feels like a statement of method. The oldest systems of control work, because they seduce before they subjugate. They offer structure. They offer intensity. They offer release from the burden of thinking, deciding, resisting, carrying your own hurt. Then they hand your pain back to you with better packaging and a stricter dress code. Someone To Blame is written from the perspective of a Dom who knows how to turn damage into devotion. It is nasty work, and the band play it with enough clarity to make you laugh, wince, and squirm.
By the time the outro finally lands on “someone to blame for your pain,” it feels like a lock clicking into place somewhere behind your ribs. That’s the song’s ugliest insight: there are people who ache for deliverance, and there are sadists who learn to market themselves as the answer by becoming the warden.
“It’s coming from a place of disgust with people that get off on watching ‘less thans’ suffer,” says Edward. “It’s not about kink-shaming, but if anyone deserves to be kink-shamed, it’s them.” Good. That bluntness serves the material. Too many songs with this sort of subject matter get coy and start admiring their own leather gloves in the mirror.
Even the cover art gets in on the scheme, taking the old Uncle Sam image and turning it into something masked, armored, depersonalized, with authority standing there as role and costume at once. The face is hidden; the function remains. That’s the point. Systems survive because the individuals inside them can swap out while the gesture stays the same. New mouth, same order. New mask, same appetite.
Listen to Someone To Blame below:
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The post Seattle’s Holy Death Temple Shares Their Disgust for Bootlicking Sadists With “Someone To Blame” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
