In this feature today we’re sort of premiering a video for a song from the forthcoming self-titled mini-album by the artist Countess Erzsebet. “Sort of” because the video is age-restricted, and therefore we’re only able to give you a link to YouTube where you can verify that you are a mature adult, or at least an adult.
The name of the song is “In the Blood of Virgins“, and it’s age-restricted because (as the Countess explains) it includes “abstract erotic horror elements”, though the scenes of her bathing in blood obviously weren’t abstract enough to satisfy YouTube and its algorithms.
Before we get to some further details about the video, and most especially about the music you’ll hear, we might need to introduce some of you to Countess Erzsebet (previously known as Erzsebet when she released the nearly-album-length Black Spell in 2017). She is also known as Rachel Bloodspell Moongoddess, who has previously played bass for a number of bands but more recently Xasthur, where she did three tours playing acoustic bass and was on the Aestas Pretium MMXVIII EP.
But her background also includes other interesting details.
For one thing, Rachel makes guitars and bass guitars and is learning the luthier trade. In Countess Erzsebet she plays electric bass and guitar that she built herself, and in fact she plays all instruments on the new album (guitar, bass, organ, and programming), in addition to singing, although on four of the songs she was accompanied on drums by Steve Peacock of Spirit Possession and Pandiscordian Necrogenesis. We should add that as a child Rachel was trained in classical piano and jazz bass and guitar.
As for the music on the new album, it has been described as a “grimy and ghostly soundworld where the likes of Goblin, Ved Buens Ende, Mercyful Fate, Coven, Leviathan, and Bathory all bubble in a murky, mysterious cauldron”.
An aura of sinister mystery certainly shrouds “In the Blood of Virgins“, as a gritty guitar menacingly scratches at the mind around woozy bass tones, and the Countess‘s voice rises in wraith-like wails (at the same time in the video we’re introduced to her abandoned waterfront castle).
As she prepares her bath of blood, acoustic strumming creates a moody spell. As she enters the red liquid the electric instruments return, both abrasive and beguiling, but this time the Countess‘s voice transforms the mood from menace to frightening horror with scalding shrieks. Still, the song is hallucinatory, even if the visions of the protagonist luxuriating in blood leave little to the imagination. (Click below to experience all the sights and sounds.)
Rachel’s plan is to use the new mini-album as the soundtrack for an independent short film to be released later this year that will include this video, and others. (You’ll find another one below for the song “Glorification of the Profane“.) The record itself will be released on July 28th on CD and vinyl LP formats.
MORE INFO AVAILABLE HERE:
https://countesserzsebet.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CountessErzsebet666