You might want to skip this post, as it may be difficult to shake. Skynd is a troll in a Danish fairytale depicting a kidnapped wife and her husband’s attempts to take her back. He eventually succeeds, but only with the admonition that he must never rush her to do anything again, otherwise she’ll be returned to said troll, Skynd.
Band SKYND is the brainchild of Swedish-born Marina Ortega [maybe]. Per her website, “I want to get as close as possible to the evil that humans are capable of. I am obsessed with it. For weeks, months even, I’ve been trying to get into the heads of the most vicious, cruel killers. There is nothing more fascinating to me than people who have reached the boundary of their humanity.” And by God she does it. Each of her thrilling music videos recreates a different serial killer in all of their hideous glory (Richard Ramirez, Jim Jones, Katherine Knight), or in some cases murderous situation (Columbine).
This isn’t Mr. Rogers’ stuff here, this is adult, fully-fledged, unrepentant horror and not an easy watch as SKYND is an ambitious if exacting performer highly demanding of her audience. The music has an eerie sing-song effect of ice-cold metal riveted together with SKYND’s vexingly voxed vocals and achingly high-pitched candy-cane-lilted lyrics creating a disquieting effect that offsets the deeply thrusted dynamic rhythms.
Tyler Hadley the man (re: animal) per Wikipedia, took three pills of ecstasy, stood behind his Mother, and proceeded to bludgeon her to death with a hammer, then found his Father and echoed the sentiment. At the end of the video, SKYND actually depicts Tyler’s overweight father exiting his master suite, and realizing his son’s brutal intent, he mouths a scream of “Why?” ending with his son mouthing back, in an inconceivable blood-rage, “Why. The. Fuck. Not.”
The chorus’s ‘party’ reference is of course to Tyler’s bash (over 60 attendees) at the actual crime scene mere hours later and displaying his handiwork to at least one friend. “And the party goes on, and on and on…” You will feel the sheer magnitude of intensity that is SKYND’s portrayal, but your inner child may want its Mommy.
- SKYND’s music can be bought on her website here and Apple here listened to on Spotify here and followed on Facebook here
Interesting production techniques. I can appreciate the overall effort, but I don’t know that I’d rush out to listen to more. But I may check it out again — Diamanda Galas grew on me, as did early Foetus, and this seems like it is cut from that same cloth of experimental.
Your experience is beyond mine. I’m unfamiliar with those bands. Good to know going forward though… 😉 Thanks!
I’m just an old fart who loves music.
Diamanda Galas is a opera-trained singer who did experimental vocalizations (1/32nd note arpeggios, for example; “Serpent and the Rainbow” used her to voice one of the zombies rising from the grave in a man’s drugged out haze) and I used to play her albums on Halloween to scare away trick-or- treaters (namely her piece “Wild women with steak knives”). The alternating shrieks and guttural vocalizations (like a troll in heat) generally gave parents and kids a reason to skip my place. They’d pause outside and decide to move on without knocking.
Scraping Foetus of the Wheel was one of the first true art-industrial bands out there. “Nail” (1985) is probably his best (the band is like NiN with respect that it is mostly Thirwell writing all the songs), in my opinion. Very edgy for the time period. The name saw several variations: You’ve got Foetus on Your Breath, Foetus Inc., etc.), so people tend to just call it Foetus.
I recommend trying both out if you want something dark and a little outside most people’s comfort zone.
Hmm, a fascinating concept, both lyrically, musically and visually, but I think I would prefer to just listen to her songs than watch her videos, as I’m not a fan of horror.
Gotcha. Huge fan of horror here. Grew up reading all of Stephen King’s books and others on UFOs, Bigfoot, etc. Yeah, it’s a pretty dark video though, agreed.
Awesome write up to a very disturbing video. My first hearing Skynd but definitely going to explore her material further.
Thank you for the kind words. I’ve been going through her videos; still haven’t looked her up on Spotify, but will now (add to playlist). Cheers man! =)
Love it. I am checking them both out. I once hung a fishing line from our second story home down to the front sidewalk and fashioned a ghost from a sheet over a hanger. That ghost flying down that line directly at a little kid while I had someone screaming from the bushes with an amp. One little kid went screaming off and came back with his big brother.
So far, I like ‘Pigswill’ and ‘Enter the Inferno’. Diamanda is fucking bent. 15 minutes of that is off-the-hook crazy.
Blimey! You did issue a warning at the start of the post, but I found I couldn’t look away… good song, though!
boogie hasn’t sounded so fucking good… thank you let for your mind dogs out to fuck with play – reminds me of Test Department (with lyrics)
Has visuals one can’t look away from and a good beat to it…sort of reminds me of Lady Gaga videos in her early days, but more intense. And more bloody. I enjoyed.
Clearly, she has an agenda. I’m glad you liked it.
Lol…that’s for sure.