by Shane Lange:
“We want people to feel alive by being disturbed by our sounds and the images we connect with them.”
What does the end of the world look like? A flock of sheep roaming the halls of a mansion, about to be set upon by ravenous dinner party guests like a pack of wolves.
Listening to the apocalyptic sound of L.A.’s Bestial Mouths, one wonders: are we the sheep or the wolves?
The aforementioned predatory scene, taken from surrealist master Luis Bunuel’s film, The Annihilating Angel, depicts how quickly social custom can give way to savagery in the face of disaster, as a group of people finds itself physically unable to leave a dinner party. And the situation grows more surreal as they realize they are not trapped – they simply cannot leave.
Just as surrealism arose from the Dadaist response to the horrors of World War I, Bestial Mouths looks to surrealism for a musical means to examine and describe our own era’s dark heart: washes of thick, heavy reverberating synths; a barrage of stuttering drums; and anguished, keening vocals all coalesce into an electric, roaring nightmare.
Song lyrics are devised from cut-ups, says vocalist Lynette Cerezo, using the same cut’n’paste method employed by the Dadaists and later popularized by Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs. The words “usually start with dreams or automatic writing,” adds band co-founder and synthesist Christopher Myrick. Calling to mind Cocteau‘s assertion that a literary masterpiece is only a dictionary out of order, the technique entails re-ordering the words and phrases of a preexisting text to reveal a new work seemingly hidden within.
The song “Gulls” offers a compelling example, particularly as voiced by Cerezo’s transfixing siren call, which is equal parts Siouxsie Sioux and Diamanda Galas:
On the sickening edge of the air
In a weeping telepathy
Take a piece of our silence
And bring you screaming back to me
As videos for “Gulls” and more recently “White Eyes” attest, the same dark surrealist influence extends to the band’s visuals. Similar to the Alejandro Jodorowsky film Holy Mountain, imagery includes elemental totems, mystical atmospheres, and beautiful, desolate landscapes as dangerous as they are breathtaking. Cerezo reflects, “I guess in my eyes it has always kind of felt like the end of the world. Not necessarily in a depressed way, but just…knowing at any given moment any catastrophic event could happen – like my own death, which would be the end of the world for me.”
Directed by Niko Sonnberger, “White Eyes” portrays the band members as Romero-like undead figures, shuffling through the desert as the victims of their own zombie apocalypse – although, Myrick notes, “for it to be a real apocalypse they would probably need to be fast zombies.” (adds Cerezo, “the idea of an infection spreading rapidly or zombies with speed is really frightening to me.”)
[“White Eyes” Official Video, directed by Niko Sonnberger: www.nikosonnberger.com]The intended affect of their work, both visual and aural, is transformative. The band’s second synthesist, Gustavo Aldana, compares the band’s sound to the Andrzej Żuławski film, Diabel (The Devil):
“There is a constant questioning of reality and paranoia in the movie. In the film, the protagonist is saved from a war prison only to witness betrayal and misery enough to drive him insane. Beyond the subject matter, the sound and imagery evoke this bleak environment – the opening sequence particularly. Scenes of bloody chaos and insanity combined with harsh noise are quite relative to our sound.”
Of cinema and music he observes:
“When we see something that moves us and disturbs us in some way, it leaves a mark related to that piece that we will never forget. We would like to create that experience for our audiences…We want people to feel alive by being disturbed by our sounds and the images we connect with them.”
The band recently returned from their first European tour. “We met a lot of people and went to so many places. It’s overwhelming,” says drummer Jessica Reuter, “when I think back. Touring with Animal Bodies was especially great; Sam and Natasha were incredibly nice and easy to get along with, and it definitely made the trip special. There’s really nothing better than waking up in a new place every day and being able to play for an audience every night.”
Doomsday prophecies notwithstanding, the new Bestial Mouths split-12” with Deathday will be released on Desire Records in mid-February, ahead of their appearance at SXSW in March. An LP release is planned for Clandestine Records.
You can find Bestial Mouths on Tumblr and Facebook.
When he’s not writing for DarkMedia, Shane Lange swims in the cultural sea, up to his ears in music, film, and literature. If it’s dark, and it’s smart, chances are you’ve got his attention.
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