In the past few hours, electro-industrial duo SKYND released the music video for ‘Gary Heidnik.’ The track is from their forthcoming EP, Chapter 1, slated to drop August 15. The EP portrays the real-life crimes of Gary Michael Heidnik, who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered women while holding them confined in the basement of his home in Philadelphia.
The track and video feature Korn’s frontman, Jonathan Davis. Elucidating the concept behind the music, Skynd says, “All human beings are capable of cruelty and we have to keep the inner animal in check. We’re here to provide a different perspective on the psyche to maybe answer some questions.”
SKYND is the shadowy artistic conduit of lead singer, Skynd, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Father. The duo’s music enters realms of astonishing sonic energy, ignoring every precedent by coalescing visuals, pressure, chill, and sound into an all-encompassing voyage elevated from Dante’s Inferno.
“Gary Heidnik” opens with eerie, menacing synths, followed by Skynd’s otherworldly vocals. Oscillating synths ramp-up to pulverizing spirals, like something gorgeously, nastily tight radiating forth. Calcified, chaffering background vocals append noxious homunculus tones, suffusing the tune with deliciously wicked effluvium.
The lyrics, akin to something out of a Cosmic Neronianism, project twitching, boiling sketches of insane exhilaration.
Oh god he would be amused/ Dark shadows of an evil mind / God has a sense of humor / Dark shadows of an evil mind / God he would be amused / To see you at my feet / See you at my feet / 3520 North Marshall Street.
The video, directed by TallyHo!, depicts a psychic periscope rising into surreal, imaginal spheres of an alternate, zany fantasy composed of pure randomness, like chaos suspended over a black abyss. There’s an atmosphere clinging to the images: unseen ghosts, dissipated sounds, a suffocating plexus of ambiguities seething about a mnemotope.
Taut with foreboding, “Gary Heidnik” is simultaneously subtle and egregious, alarming and flamboyant. In short, it’s ruthlessly excellent.
