In 2020, Lucien Greaves, spokesperson and co-founder of The Satanic Temple, teamed up with Luke Henshaw and Justin Pearson (who had previously worked together, notably in Planet B) to record “some stuff”, without really knowing what it would become, other than that it would be an extension of the religious organisation’s messages (whose fight against Christian nationalism, in particular, very often takes a political turn). Spoken word, trippy electronica, then Dave Lombardo joining the trio on drums: Satanic Planet was born with a self-titled debut album, a hybrid, multi-headed monster as chaotic as it was intriguing. Dead Deities is the continuation of these experiments by mad alchemists who seem, little by little, to have found the right formula to plunge us into a universe where the industrial and the mystical blend into a mysterious, dark, ferocious yet often exhilarating spectacle.
Greaves’ and Pearson’s voices echo one another, with sinister, chanted incantations and raw, wailing screams. Very quickly, the ritual defies categorisation. An unsettling atmosphere à la Throbbing Gristle, a seething madness à la Skinny Puppy (Nivek Ogre could well have been sniggering like a maniac over Dr Green), heavy, thumping rhythms in the vein of Author & Punisher, but also organs and violins to create a baroque horror setting, somewhere between a gothic film soundtrack and the macabre theatre of Das Ich, or subtle trap touches as on Psyclon Nine’s recent blasphemous (Antichrist, with its creepy whispers): Satanic Planet brings a whole host of things to mind but, ultimately, is unlike any of them and is pretty unique.
Haunting choruses and a melancholic melody carry us through the funeral hymn Church Burning and its grandiloquent ambiguity (the track is said to denounce an attempted bomb attack on a church belonging to the Satanic Temple, or so they tell us!), whilst the repetition imposed by the ritual and the invocations is both visceral and hypnotic. There’s no doubt about it: with this second album, Satanic Planet have found their formula. Their monster is no longer taking its first faltering, timid steps but roars with power, each track a furious diatribe against ultra-conservative America, a cry of rebellion and freedom that is both unifying and savage. Sam Alito, the Supreme Court judge responsible for the anti-abortion travesty of 2022, bears the brunt of this attack in particular, though humour is never far away – provided you know how to appreciate it.
Beyond its sometimes hilarious punchlines, Dead Deities is a veritable feast for fans of horror films, thanks to Luke Henshaw’s mischief and its love for grubby atmospheres, synth pads straight from beyond the grave, unholy and deviant mirages, and twisted growls. The screeching, possessed Headless Man, the sinister nursery rhymes of Ouroboros and the incredible, exuberant, cartoonish madness of the closing track Satan Spawn, a follow-up to the track Satanic Planet from the debut album, are all moments where you’ll find it hard not to smile as menacingly as possible, or even burst out laughing in the final seconds of the album when that creepy, deep voice repeats ‘sex, sex, sex’. Some people just ask for trouble! Dead Deities sometimes has the wickedness of the best episodes of South Park, the same sharpness in its satirical excess. It’s brilliant.
And that is perhaps Dead Deities’ greatest strength: there are the messages, there is the madness and ambition of this mystico-crazy affair that never lacks bite, but above all there is the pleasure of experiencing this sort of delirious ceremony. The melodies are captivating, at times offering a kind of unexpected macabre poetry (the unexpected, ramshackle waltz at the end of the title track, for example), the work on the immersive atmospheres is particularly successful and it packs a real punch, with Lombardo’s drums adding an organic element that gives the whole thing extra percussion. With them, Satan is decidedly that cheeky, insolent punk rejected by his father, embodying contradiction, marginalisation and the outcasts in equal measure.
So we turn up the volume to better appreciate this rebellion, this anger, this despair, but also this exhilarating sense of the absurd, this ability to display unstoppable irony and to wrap it all up in a mystical, obscure, welcoming yet frightening theatricality. In a twist that only these lot know how to pull off, Satanic Planet pulls off a strange feat: rarely have things like empathy, respect for others and the diversity of viewpoints sounded so badass! So here’s the perfect album for having an abortion, for trying cannibalism (as in the irresistible short film that accompanies Antichrist), but this rallying cry is also the ideal fuel for plunging the old world into full-blown satanic panic and watching it burn!
