W: Charva

Erotic Secrets Of Pompeii are Thomas Hawtin (vocals), Tom Hackwell (guitar/synth), Sean Jones (guitar), Lousie Schwarz (bass) and Jake Cheesman (drums).

Erotic Secrets Of Pompeii are a Bristol based five piece and if their name alone isn’t enough to entice you into listening to them, they play apocalyptic lounge music. They are a band who are constantly taking inspiration from a broad range of artists across a variety of mediums, including surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, former Australian performer Leigh Bowery and William Blake. All, and more, have played a role in shaping ESOP’s lucid, seductive and connected world, as they lean ever more into mind-bending rock in all its forms and surreal lyrical themes

Their latest single, Speak Medieval, builds upon the raucous energy of their debut album, Mondo Maleficum, released in January of this year, and is perhaps their most ambitious entry to date. Recorded at Humm Studios in Bristol, Speak Medieval is just shy of three minutes long, yet it crams in more unorthodox twists than a prog rock track in half the time. As a result, you can’t help but latch on to Speak Medieval to hear where it goes next. Imagine the wheels of a rollercoaster you’re riding become disconnected with the track, but you were already riding it backwards and blindfolded anyway and you end up having a better time sailing through the air than the track you were originally on. That’s Speak Medieval.

Time signatures are altered in the first ten seconds before a jolting riff competes with the maniacal and child-like musings of lead vocalist Thomas Hawtin. ‘I am trickster, mischief maker. Watch me put a wasp in the incubator.’ Hawtin’s capricious lyrics are woven into the links of chainmail that is Speak Medieval and he is relentless in the way he propels the track’s happy lawlessness. Sometimes hoarse and often deranged, Hawtin inhabits different characters at will as he hurls fractured thoughts into the ether. ‘I am Lepus- myxomatosis. Who put the ergot in the Hovis?’

For those that need it, respite comes in the chorus, where notes hang like sweeping strokes in a Carrington painting for a memorable hook . The music video for Speak Medieval features a fully garbed knight haphazardly navigating modern life, as he aimlessly wanders around Bristol. When the chorus kicks in the knight becomes introspective, as if realising he is a man out of time and is hopelessly unable to communicate with anyone, giving the line ‘All those little things they’ve got me in despair’, additional emotive weight.

Erotic Secrets Of Pompeii are playing upcoming shows at the following UK venues:
18/04- Glasgow- Hug & Pint
19/04- Darwen- Sunbird Records
20/04- Sheffield- Hallamshire Hotel
24/04- Bristol- Exchange
27/04- Brighton- Prince Albert