The self-titled LP from Los Angeles industrial/post-rock outfit Bestial Mouths shouldn't make the listener comfortable. Is should do the opposite, in fact. "Bestial Mouths" should furrow brows, make fingers titter, perhaps even induce the listener into nervously glancing around at otherwise comforting surroundings.
It's not that the band is bad. It's that the group doesn't want to be the soundtrack for a relaxing summer day. Forcing listeners to confront the feelings of unease presented by the music is part of Bestial Mouths' goal. Forcing listeners to consider why the music bothers them is part two. Keyboardist Christopher Myrick compared vocalist Lynette Cerezo and her live performance style as a metaphor for the group's ultimate purpose.
"Lynette puts a lot of physicality into her performance, and she often goes into the audience," he says. "I think this is a good symbol of our mission, to confront people and break down normal barriers of comfort."
What represents "comfort" in music? For Bestial Mouths, the answer could be tonality, consonance, or high fidelity recordings. These things are thrown to hurricane-force winds during the band's recordings. Myrick and fellow keyboardist Gustavo Aldana form dense walls of sound that battle with drummer Jessica Reuter's thunderous rhythms for attention. Typical music pushes the vocalist to the fore, but Bestial Mouths buries Cerezo's voice behind the instrumentals, emphasizing the sensation of being overwhelmed. The go-to reference point for her vocals is Siouxsie Sioux, but Cerezo offers genuine terror versus Sioux's goth demeanor. Surrounded by the lo-fi cacophony, Lydia Lunch comparisons are easy. The bleak lyrics and horror-movie visuals within the band's music videos have drawn goth comparisons as well, but the apocalyptic vibes echo early industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle in their aesthetic.
And there's certainly an aesthetic. "White Eyes," a single off of the new album, layers levels of frightening imagery in its music video. There are standard tropes such as insects and animal skulls, and more intense visuals like psychokinetic manipulation and the titular white eyes. Most of the action is shot against the scrub of a south California desert (aside from a shot where Cerezo and another bandmate are mummified together), bringing together the natural beauty of the wilderness into union with the unnatural, er, beauty of the band. The rapid sequences and skillfully-executed shots serve as testimony to the group's vision (and perhaps Aldana's time studying film at the University of California Santa Barbara).
Aldana is the first to clarify that the sound is more important than the vision however. He acknowledges the use of lighting effects onstage, but says the main focus is creating an "overwhelming sound." Myrick referred to the videos as theatrical, but the live performances as "energetic or kinetic." Cerezo says performances are "cathartic."
That catharsis goes a long way. Despite all the doom and gloom in the music, Myrick says the band are easygoing offstage.
"I feel we're reasonably happy, well-adjusted people," he said with a laugh. "People are generally kind of surprised how not-scary we are after meeting us. I think we put all of that into our music and aren't interested in projecting the image outside of that."
The band members seem to think that their music succeeds not because of sadness or fearfulness, but because it expresses emotion in general, and they're just as quick to praise a group that expresses similar levels of emotion, even if it's a different vibe. The group toured in 2012 with Austra, a Canadian electronic band that, while moody, generates fairly positive vibes. Austra fans still gelled with Bestial Mouths, which Aldana attributed to the strong emotions both groups displayed onstage.
"They're extremely genuine people and they seem to be very spiritually in tune," he said. "I think you can tell through their music, especially their live performances, that there is a lot of real feeling and emotion that goes into their sound."
Listeners can take comfort knowing that Bestial Mouths pours honest emotions and passion into its music. Just as long as those listeners don't take comfort when they hear that music.
