Bristol art rock agitators Erotic Secrets of Pompeii return with their torturesome new single, ‘Speak Medieval’, set for release on 27th March.
A frenetic assault of chromatic riffs and stop-start rhythms, ‘Speak Medieval’ explores the fragile threads that hold communication together in a world teetering on the brink. It’s a song of communion and conflict, of words that baffle and deceive. The song revels in the violent undercurrents of nursery rhymes, dragging them to their natural, gruesome conclusions, where the gleeful repetition of childhood verse dissolves into something far more sinister.
Laden with grotesquely medieval imagery – pricking needles, ergot visions, greased-up geese – the track conjures a world where language both conceals and reveals its own brutality. “I am trickster, mischief maker…” intones frontman Thomas Hawtin, an unreliable narrator prowling through the wreckage of fractured speech, wielding words like weapons.
Musically, ‘Speak Medieval’ is a breaking wheel spinning madly while petulant guitars clash and convulse, rhythms lurch unpredictably, and Hawtin’s vocal delivery veers between inebriated parson and deranged storyteller. It’s a song that embodies the chaos it describes, a thrilling and unsettling reminder that language is never as innocent as it seems.
This is ESOP at their most unhinged—aggressive yet whimsical, punchy yet elusive.
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