Bristol’s Adoring Returns in Their Video for the Macabre and Gothic “Malevolent Grip”

The mountain in my head is too steep

Before I fall I’ll just leap

Save that precious time you keep

Born out of the bleakness of a pandemic-stricken Bristol in 2020, Adoring was the brainchild of vocalist Jack Sargent and multi-instrumentalist George Turner. What began in the confines of a bedroom quickly grew into something far larger, a project that harnessed the restless energy of post-punk and thrust it into the limelight. Soon, they added Scott “Scoops” Alexander-Bowen on guitar and Will Palmer on bass, transforming their sound into a blistering live experience.

After two years in the dark, the post-punk quartet roars back with their new single, Malevolent Grip. The track tears through the air, sharp as broken glass, dragging listeners into its raw, unrelenting embrace. With crushing guitars, pounding electronic beats, and basslines drenched in chorus, Adoring’s sound roams wide, from frenzied post-punk to macabre goth-rock, and ethereal new wave. Their music grips like a vice, pulling from the deep wells of bands like Garden of Mary, Fearing, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. This is the sound of a band that never forgot the weight of isolation but learned to turn it into something explosive, unsettling, and electric.

Malevolent Grip strikes like a fist through glass, a raw preview of what’s coming with Adoring’s third EP, blessedarethepitiful, set to drop on November 15 through Bristol’s independent Hollow Life Records. The lyrics trace the slow, bitter descent of someone trapped in the vice of self-doubt and the relentless grind of conformity. Hopes are shackled, crushed under the weight of expectations, their self-worth ground to dust as they fight to resist being shaped into something they loathe.

The mind’s mountain looms too high, too steep—driving them toward a reckless leap, a desperate dive into whatever lies beyond. They’ve hardened, becoming a stone hurled against their own defenses, caught between a thirst for release and a lingering ache for something better. The track pulses with anger, seething in its resentment of the one who pulls the strings, each line brimming with a barely contained rage. It’s a dark reckoning.

The song builds toward a grim rejection of manipulation, a gnawing desire for vengeance, while also staring down the inevitable fall. Adoring have mastered the art of channeling raw despair into something ferocious, something that demands to be heard before it all crashes down.

“We’ve been performing this song live from before we took a break, so I’m glad we could finally let it out into the world, soon to be accompanied by various other new music offerings,” says vocalist Jack Sargent.

Accompanied by a jarring music video crafted by bassist Will Palmer—a chaotic collision of 70s horror, archival fragments, and warped live clips—the new track plunges into the grim depths of goth-rock. Jack Sargent’s vocals, sharp and ghoulish, lead the charge as the song drags listeners through a dark, jagged landscape. The video mirrors the song’s unsettling energy, each distorted frame pushing the band’s raw, relentless sound further into madness. It’s not a descent for the faint-hearted but a hellish dive into the brutal and the macabre, where nothing is softened and everything is laid bare.

Watch the video for “Malevolent Grip” below:

From November 15th, onward, you can pre-order cassettes of blessedarethepitiful here.

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