The fiercest joy we have is gagged and bound
The rope is fraying and the fangs come out
We keep it caged up with the fear and doubt
I wanna see it when the fangs come out
Seattle’s Hot Hail! plunges headfirst into this tangled tempest with ALL THE BLOOD YOU WANTED, a fever-drenched feast from the mind of Billy Sigil. Synths shimmer like broken glass, drum machines clatter like distant thunder, and melodies sweeten the blow with a wink. It’s gorgeous, it’s grim, it’s guttural…and it dares you to dance through the wreckage.
Madness knots itself thick and tight…a nest of gnashing thoughts, bound compulsions, and barbed longing. The mind, once lucid, now lurches and limps, dragged by snarled impulses that choke as they cling. Pull one strand, and the whole thing tightens. One moment, you’re reaching for warmth; the next, you’re baring teeth, sure of betrayal. Love and loathing swing from the same tether. The ache is immense, yet cutting loose feels crueler than carrying the weight. But ALL THE BLOOD YOU WANTED confronts these screaming demons with courage, grace and a sick dance beat.
Opening strong with CALIGARI DANCE PARTY, this track is less song than séance, a danse macabre on borrowed bones…’German Expressionist Disco’ sliced with the cold sheen of Depeche Mode and the nervy shimmer of Midge Ure. Identity isn’t worn here; it’s warped, twisted, and finally torn away under a strobe-lit storm.
WYRD whispers from the bones of forgotten matriarchs; a love song from the edges, sung in silk and smoke. The wyrd woman waits…steadfast, sorrow-soaked, and stronger than she appears. You might’ve forgotten her, but she hasn’t forgotten you. With synth sighs and a serrated beat, she slips beside you and sings of survival.
And then JUSTICE: a jagged hymn to revenge and ruin. With Lerin Huntley’s voice cutting through like a cracked blade, the song scours the wreckage of righteousness. The banners still wave, but at what cost? Blood dries. Echoes stay.
“I ended up unintentionally writing kind of a tryptic of songs about BPD on this album,” says Sigil. “In extreme BPD, there’s a tendency, sometimes, to completely burn out everything we loved about people and dehumanize them when we feel let down or abandoned by them. This is destructive enough on its own, but unfortunately there are a lot of modern cultural forces that amplify and encourage and reward this sort of behavior. This song is sort of an observation of that.”
RAT KING walks barefoot through broken glass, trudging through tar-thick synths that hiss and hum like machines with secrets. There’s a scent of Songs of Faith and Devotion in the air: sweat, incense, iron…and the sharp sting of Marc Almond’s mirror-gazed gloom.
Next comes DREDGE: a crawl through the cold underbelly of memory. This is blood-inked scripture scrawled on basement walls, a hymn for the tainted and the terrified. Ancestral aches ooze from the corners, rot rising like steam from a slaughterhouse drain. The horror here is heirloom, passed down like a cursed heirloom locket; twisting, twitching, whispering. The drums drag, the synths snarl, and beneath it all something ancient stirs…an old wound licking its lips, waiting to be remembered. Together, these tracks baptize you in the darkness.
“Musically, this was an attempt to write a John Carpenter score as a pop song,” says Sigil. “Lyrically, this is about the influence of syphilis on the history of horror fiction (they really are deeply entwined going back a very long time, and it is a legit and fascinating thing), but in a broader sense, it is about how we use fictional horror both to process and avoid dealing with the real world horrors of our daily lives.”
“RUIN” captures the essence of powerful surrender, with a blend of snarls and soft melodies layered over dark, retro synths that evoke the feeling of lost weekends spent in the 8-bit and 16-bit worlds of the 1980s. The song expresses the idea of giving yourself—body and breath—to another person with complete faith and open hands. There is a sweetness in the stillness, but underlying it all is a sense of sorrow, as even moments of bliss can become tarnished with time. Outside, the world is chaotic and fragmented, while inside, the bed transforms into a fleeting sanctuary.
“CRACKS” pulses with metallic and soulful dark cabaret beats, echoing like bells in an Eastern monastery. In this sacred space, the mind retreats inward, grappling with the ache of needing love as a fragile scaffolding. Yet, like a vessel with cracks, it leaks, no matter how abundantly it is filled.
HORRIFIC hurls itself headlong into the maelstrom, all steel sinew and cracked resolve. The track is a stammering heartbeat of collapse: cold drums, broken rhythms, and a voice like fire tearing through frost. Sigil seethes with a sermon for the doomed, raging against the ruin with the righteous bitterness of one who sees too clearly and still stands. Hopelessness here isn’t a dead end…it’s a drumbeat. A signal. A danceable dirge for the doomscroll generation.
FANGS, with Christiana Crabbe (Sprig), is a duet that bares its teeth in shuddering tenderness, with guitars weaving their way through the Depeche Mode-esque melody like a serpent intwining its prey. It is a love song for the feral; two monsters in mortal clothing, meeting mid-grocery run, sensing the hunger behind the eyes. There’s no coy courtship here, just the quiet thrill of recognition. The ache to split ribcages and devour devotion. Brief? Maybe. But beautiful in its wildness. Like lightning in a jar of blood.
INTO THE DARK closes the circle. Less lament than lullaby, it offers a hand…delicate, sure…as the world exhales. Endings are honoured, not feared. A feminine figure – goddess, ghost, guide – walks beside the listener, steady as moonlight. Together, they raise their glasses, scatter the ashes, and step forward. The dance goes on. Even as the light goes out.
“I am a witch,” Sigil declares. “I have one foot squarely in rationalism, but being a witch is part of what I am. And one of the primary deity relationships I have is with Hekate. Every month(ish) we have a dinner party with her, and burn things we want to let go of, and put the ashes on her plate of food and take it to the crossroads for her to carry away. It’s a really lovely, simple way of letting go each month. The greatest lesson any witch can learn is to become so comfortable with death that we can greet her as a friend at the end. Our entire culture has become built around the denial of death, of the end. We hack ourselves to pieces creating a grotesquery of eternal youth. We fight to stay alive even when immediate death is inevitable and die shoved full of tubes in striplighted rooms that smell like bleach and piss. We murder each other over competing fairytales of how our limited little ego is going to survive just as it is, even past death. We can’t let go. I can’t say for sure that I’ll be any better, in the end, but this song is a hymn to Hekate, and my friendship with her, and the hope that I’ll be able to greet her with joy when the time comes for me to stop existing.”
Listen to ALL THE BLOOD YOU WANTED below and order the album here.
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