South African artist Hunter As a Horse unveils her latest nu-goth masterpiece, Paradise Lost, via Metropolis Records.
Having already covered album tracks, ‘Here’s To All The Ones’, ‘Obey’, ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Leviathan’, and ‘Lighthouse’, to say that I love Paradise Lost is an understatement. Integrating and flowing with darkness, Hunter As a Horse shows us how to pack salt into our cuts and source our strength through the struggle.
I have always been drawn to the villains in stories, the ones who were feared and misunderstood, and I have often found beauty in places other people are afraid to look – the strange, the haunted, the macabre. Some people see monsters. I see stories. I see what survived. I see how it transformed. This album is resurrection, obsession, desire, revenge, surrender, love and my shadow. I don’t believe darkness is always something to be destroyed. Sometimes it’s the only part of you strong enough to save you. This album isn’t about conventional ‘healing’. It’s about walking out of the ruins wearing the crown.”
– Hunter As a Horse musician and vocalist, Mia van Wyk
Now that Paradise Lost has finally dropped, Hunter As a Horse has even more darkwave gems erupting from the woodwork. ‘Object’ flits from a more acoustic opening and shifts slowly to digital distortions. Dissociation promising the wasteland of weightlessness once again, ‘Object’ is the chant coaxing you through the gates. Burnt out and hollowed, this track is at the apex of the eclipse of the self. Begging for release, or maybe just temporary relief, ‘Object’ yearns for more peaceful energies while swirling the drain of being human, and all its twisting currents.
‘Go To Bed Now’ begins with a haunting orchestral opening that escorts a gorgeous, nu-goth dance-track to the floor. Asking us to consider what speaks the whispers in our dreams, what’s that floating in the astral current, what’s haunting us as we try to drift at twilight, this song is well adrift with the peripheral, nagging toxin. If curses flung in the day have ever clung to you long into the night, or if you hope to linger just long enough in the thoughts of another, ‘Go To Bed Now’ has a hell of a pull either way.
‘Dark Sky’ is a terror-laced, industrial synth track. Surrendering fully to the primal, this track is both the cry and the bloodied howl. Coalescing into one, the wounded now gets to bare the maw. A track of shapeshifting, alchemical synthesis, and discord, ‘Dark Sky’ is cataclysmic and only just beginning.
Paradise Lost is magic through and through. With occult symbolism coursing within each track and synthwave that branches out into a varied canopy of darkwave exploration, Hunter As a Horse is in a musical league all of her own.
Follow Hunter As a Horse on: bandcamp | facebook | youtube | instagram