Today’s video of the day comes from Bristol’s wych elm: ‘Scold’s Bridle’ brews up a hextastic tale of weird and wonderful sisters with a defiant grunge soundtrack.

A scold’s bridle was an instrument of punishment as a form of torture and public humiliation. It was used overwhelmingly on female victims to silence them from speaking entirely. The victims were punished for quite literally being “loud women”. 

Vocalist Caitlin Elliman wrote the song about her own experiences of being silenced by men.

“It’s alarming how little has changed in such a long amount of time. When women talk about the truth, you tend to be villanised because people don’t like that.”  

Wych elm is the macabre-fuelled band who formed as ‘Jane Doe’ to play a Halloween gig in 2017, selling their debut EP in hand-sewn cadaver bag. But this is no gimmick band – their EP tackles serious issues relevant to the sisterhood for centuries. And it’s earned them places at Dot to Dot in Bristol and Nottingham and Wide Eyed in Leicester as well as Bristol and London headline shows for the end of 2021 before their biggest show to date, supporting IDLES at O2 Academy Brixton in January 2022.

Witches are for life not just for halloween.