All the souls you steal will never be enough
The only thing that turns you on is unrequited love
An attractive nuisance or a sexy tragedy
But at the core you’re nothing more than a toxic trick or treat
Pawn Pawn (Liz Owens Boltz, Brandon Boltz, and David Daniel Smith) deliver their latest EP, Halloween, like a bottle smashed on concrete: jagged, glinting, and dangerous in the wrong hands. Hailing from the humid heart of Northwest Ohio, these three have shared songs and stages since their teens, cutting teeth in Toledo’s alleys and after-hours, swapping chords in bands like Anna’s Mom and Flamtronic before banding together under this name in 2018. What started with softer shoegaze shimmer has since slithered into something leaner, meaner: a snarling synthesis of synthpop and industrial-pop that sharpens its teeth on their latest EP.
Halloween is less an homage and more a dare. A tribute to John Carpenter’s chill, sure but also a torch carried by dark hearts who live every day like it’s October 31st. Liz Owens Boltz sings of liminal lust, revenge, and the wreckage of jealousy with a voice that can both beckon and bite. Each track teeters between tenderness and violence, seduction and self-sabotage, exploring the thin, trembling tightrope between passion and personal ruin. The trio toys with danger, dances with desire, and, like the best kind of trouble, makes destruction sound delicious. Here, in their most feral form yet, PAWN PAWN lean into the night.
It opens like a clenched fist in the dark: Trick or Treat prowls, purring with poisoned sweetness. Here’s a tale tangled in secrecy, manipulation skulking beneath every syllable. Resentment coils quiet, sharp as a knife in the night, as the singer slips into their darker self, whispering warnings between the teeth: tonight’s the night debts come due. The center track, Tell You With My Eyes, smolders soft, sweet, and slow…a deluded dream of unspoken desire. Words crumble useless, so the hunger hangs heavy in glances and gestures, the ache of wanting left unsaid but scalding.
Finally, Jealousy Looks Good On Me kicks the door in with an electric snarl of ’90s industrial pop. It spirals feral, twitching with insecurity and spite, circling like a vulture. Lust knots into obsession, each chorus tighter, uglier, until possession poisons love completely. What began as longing curdles into something unhinged, unforgiving, and entirely unholy.
Listen to Halloween below and order the EP here.
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