New Music: Holy Death Temple – Someone To Blame

Seattle really is a hotbed for gothic, industrial, and dark scene music right now, and Holy Death Temple exemplifies that with Someone To Blame.

The track is overt in its debt to S&M and industrial rock themes, especially when exploring the relationship between pain and control, and surrendering the self to another. Setting that in an arrangement that is as tight as PVC and as sharp as a whip serves to tease out those comparisons further.

But the Seattle trio also looks from Dom to Don, who applies the techniques of domination and the application of pain without pleasure – other than for himself – and without a safe word to draw things to a close. Yes, Someone To Blame is about sex, sexuality, and pain, but implicit in the lyrics is the need for consent, and the song casts a light on how easily that is lost or undermined.

Most of all, the track carries an important message that the band want to share with a wider audience. “Lyrically, the song parallels S&M themes with the descent into fascism,” they reveal.

Someone To Blame is out now and can be heard on SoundCloud and Spotify. Connect with Holy Death Temple – Bryan Edward, Amy Tung-Barrysmith, and Jon Barrysmith – on Instagram.