Like moths to their flame
For a band that’s only reached their junior album, Leeds based stoner metal band Black Moth have already had a few switch-ups, including signing to a new label, Candlelight Records. Their sounds are weighty and massive, building heavily upon foundations put in place by some of the more influential acts using this style of all time, like Black Sabbath, Swans and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. But where Black Moth manifests difference in themselves and their sounds is with the power and witty songwriting of their vocalist Harriet Hyde.
Often, Hyde plants empowering motifs within the lyrical confines of Black Moth songs, often touching in some way on feminine icons and matriarchal mythology. With Anatomical Venus, it’s obvious, if even within the name, how thematically similar it is with their previous records. Though there’s familiarity in that sense, there are differences with Anatomical Venus that set it apart, including the presence of new members, and its females first mentality.
“Istra” begins the album with a pure, almost garage rock type feel to it. Where typical brutality is demonstrated through grimy instrumentation and barreling or shrieking screams for melodic coos. This is also where the feminine themes of the album are introduced — the goddess of love Aphrodite being the “Istra” and leading track and striking percussion of “Moonbow.”
Strong recalls to ’90s grunge come from the next track “Sisters of the Stone,” and other nods at womanhood exist in the digital fanaticism surround a webcam girl subject matter of “Scream Queen” and in the sensual hard rock sounds of “Tourmaline,” but the album’s most cogent tie between motif and musical mastery comes at the album’s fulcrum.
On “Severed Grace,” Black Moth go into more detail about the meaning of the record’s title. Mellow, grungy, and using life-size wax Venus dolls to symbolize the problem with beauty standards, the lyrics in “Severed Grace” mention how these dolls are donned in jewelry and have removable organs as a way to imply how the female form is to be consumed by men as they please, without much control from the women themselves. It’s a cheeky and sad truth made tolerable through driving instrumentation and Hyde’s expressive croon.
Anatomical Venus can be considered Black Moth’s heaviest albums for many reasons, including the fierceness of its lyrical content. There are points where it seems like there isn’t enough variance between the songs, but all in all, Anatomical Venus solidly stands as a good junior release Black Moth.
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