Album Review: Ethel Cain - 'Perverts'
Ethel Cain’s newest musical creation retreats into the corners of a darker family of genres: Slowcore, dark wave and occasional noise rock. In providing us with an exceptional nightmare to begin 2025, she proves herself to be a worthy crypt sister to the likes of Lingua Ignota, Uboa, and Converge.
The critical acclaim of her 2022 album ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ brought Ethel Cain mainstream success. Since then, she has played at various live music events across North America and Europe, including Coachella, Primavera Sound and Reading & Leeds Festival. This new EP, ‘Perverts’, challenges fans with grating soundscapes and experimentations, beginning with a most jarring introductory track. Track one, ‘Perverts’, spans a lengthy 12 minutes and showcases a deviation from the caricature ‘Ethel Cain’ and her previous exploration of perversion, religion and romance. The track promises an experience of utter devastation and dread, taking listeners to the darkest depths of their feelings and guilty pleasures. It’s a daunting introduction that features an overbearing heavy atmosphere and differs greatly from the emotional, melancholic melodies of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. Some fans of Ethel Cain may struggle to adjust to this deviation into more obscure and artistic musical depths, but I implore listeners to be patient with this project and listen in segments if need be.
For an artist who has been exceptionally brave and unwavering in her personal creative expression, Ethel Cain’s newest project showcases her admirable commitment to the artistry of music production. ‘Pervert’s is an unnaturally refreshing project that reveals her interest in and passion for darker musical genres and subgenres, with tracks like ‘Houseofpsychoticwomn’ and ‘Thatorchia’ being particularly harsh to more relaxed, mainstream listeners. It’s interesting to see Ethel Cain, who has gained mainstream attention and popularity, dive into a delicacy of music that is slowcore, dark wave and even noise rock. ‘Perverts’ takes the depth and storytelling of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and builds an imposing atmosphere to compete. Ethel Cain’s flexible use of synthesizers and DIY instrumental create an overall nightmarish and otherworldly feel to the album that indicates an enticing attraction towards the depths of these more ominous genres.
Tracks jump from your regular 6-7 minute run time to more prolonged >10 minute pieces and fluctuate between purely instrumental songs and others featuring the quiet whisperings of Ethel Cain’s vocals. It’s utterly haunting to listen to and drives listeners into a chasm of pure noise and emotion. By the midpoint of the project, listeners will perhaps feel as if they are ‘in too deep’; Track 5, ‘Onanist’, takes the growing fog and infuses it with a toxin that burns your ears and scorches your heart. Gentle piano is clouded by grainy static that is then devoured by pained vocals caught in a poor radio frequency. Eerie and cursed, the track sends a chill down your spine that paralyses you in time for the next track, ‘Pulldrone’. Here, Ethel Cain expresses her most ambitious musical expertise yet. ‘Pulldrone’ demands a whole 15 minutes of our unwavering attention and patience, and is a challenge to listeners’ psyche. The uncanny quiet and emptiness of Ethel Cain’s spoken word is cut with an increasingly intrusive industrial whirring that permeates your mind. Finding a place to nestle within drone and ambience genres, this particular track is most revealing in Ethel Cain’s musical persona and technical abilities. The overwhelming atmosphere and exhausting noise of ‘Pulldrone’ will be agonising for many mainstream listeners, but for like-minded shoegaze and industrial fans it is an exciting progression for Ethel Cain into the depths of a more menacing form of music and sound design.
I’m enthusiastic to see Ethel Cain’s newest project delve into the greater depths of her previous expeditions into trauma, pain and horror through more creatively ambitious streams. ‘Perverts’ makes me, as a fan of underground industrial genres, eager for her to push herself and her musical style further into the thick of darkly intense styles. This project provides us with an initial glimpse into her experimentation with drone and synthwave and makes me eager for a full industrial noise rock album. However, at the same time, it’s pleasing to still hear subtle country and soulful influences in tracks like ‘Etienne’ and ‘Amber Waves’, showing that ‘Perverts’ is a fantastic development of Ethel Cain’s musical career and succeeds in building upon her previous success and persona. I only thirst for her full-fledged devotion to the absolute horrors of industrial, ambient noise rock.
Words by Erin Hill
