![]() The songs that were emerging were different than any previous. This is where the rough sketches of the songs that would form Hold Sacred came to be. In the summer of 2019, the band retreated to a villa outside of Rome, with no expectations or pressures but simply the intention to enjoy each other’s company and see what musical inspiration may arise from that. Their first two albums, 2011’s Violet Cries and 2013’s Wash the Sins Not Only The Face - both released on Matador Records - offered gothic, electronic-tinged dream pop and post-rock.īeginning with the Steve Albini-produced A New Nature (2014, self-released on their own Nostromo Records), they came to explore heavier post-punk and metal textures, which they intensified through 2016’s Older Terrors and 2018’s Nowhere (both via Marseille-based metal label Season of Mist). The band have snaked through various scenes and sonic worlds across their 14 years together, while always squirming away from an easy genre classification. ![]() Their winding geographical journey feels representative of their path as a whole. Though a brave departure from the grand, rock-based songwriting they’d steadily built up across prior albums, it offers the same intensity and passion via a different channel the songs creep in and envelop you quietly but wholly.Įsben and the Witch - comprising Rachel Davies, Thomas Fisher and Daniel Copeman - began in Brighton in 2008, later decamped to Berlin, and is now split three ways across the UK, Germany and the US. The album’s stripped back sonics are essential to the songs, letting atmosphere linger and steep, and creating space for Davies’ emotive vocals and storytelling. No mask, no pretense, no bravado, pure and unfiltered. Allowing this to show to yourself and other people and hoping that they’ll also accept you, when everything is stripped away and just the essence of you is left. Recognizing all your self as a whole and questioning what that really is. “When the cracks are in the walls, will you still come home? / When you see what lies beneath, will you still love me?” it asks.ĭavies says of the song: “Accepting yourself as you truly are, as ugly as that can sometimes be. ‘True Mirror’ probes at self-loathing, while seeking transcendent love and acceptance. Together, they shut themselves away to plunge into and search for solace in the depths of exhaustion, depression, anxiety, existential fear – and all beginning long before the world shut down and changed irrevocably. ![]() It’s a product of the trio’s deeply important, 14-year-spanning friendship. “ This kernel is the purest essence of Esben and the Witch since our inception.” “Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed,” says vocalist Rachel Davies of their sixth album, Hold Sacred. We’ve got the video for the new track right here and you can pre-order the album HERE Today Esben & The Witch release the second single, ‘True Mirror’ from their stunning new album, Hold Sacred out 12 May on Nostromo Records. ![]()
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