The streets flicker with candlelight; the air hums with murmured prayers and the slow shuffle of feet against ancient stone. Looming above, the Madonna glows: lit from within, her sorrowful gaze casting long shadows on the crowd below. Incense curls in the air, thick as memory, as penitents walk barefoot, eyes fixed on something beyond sight. The bells toll, deep and unhurried, a sound that drifts through narrow alleys where history clings to the walls. In these saintly processions, faith and spectacle blur; devotion takes form in solemn faces, in ritualized grief, in the eerie hush before the hymn begins.
That hymn is Madonne Elettriche, the eerie new darkwave single from Naples darkwave darlings Neila Invo. The gothic-tinged song conjures an eerie, surreal vision of glowing Madonnas standing watch over a city, silent and unwavering in their judgement. There’s an air of old school Catholic fervour mixed with menace: holiness electrified, luminous icons presiding over narrow alleys, where morality is measured and transgressions are marked. The chant-like repetition heightens the tension, evoking both reverence and fear, a ritualistic warning against indulgence. The image of these radiant figures, adorned with lilacs yet charged with authority, suggests a world where faith and surveillance blur, where divine presence is both awe-inspiring and oppressive, where sin is seen and reckoning is inevitable.
“Inspired especially by the illuminated Madonnas of the alleys of Naples, we imagined that in their stillness observe what happens around them, judging the unseemly behavior of passers,” says the band.
The melody moves with the slow, solemn tread of a funeral march; an organ groans, heavy with foreboding, its dirge stretching into the night. Then, as if possessed, the rhythm stirs, the procession lurches. What should be sacred bends into the grotesque, a parade of the damned winding through the city’s narrow veins. It is a hymn turned warning, a prayer laced with menace. The Madonne Elettriche stand luminous and unblinking, their glow both a benediction and a sentence. Nothing goes unseen…nothing goes unpunished.
In the German Expressionist-inspired video, filmed by longtime collaborator Ema Kaiser, the Blessed Mother is no gentle intercessor; she looms, she lingers, slipping into dreams like a silent judge, twisting sleep into something uneasy. For the sinners, the doubters, the ones who whisper their defiance in the dark…she waits. Then comes the reckoning; a flash, a strike, a hand of fire from the heavens. We feel a sense of foreboding similar to early silent films like Häxan and Nosferatu as these shadowy sinners lurk in the darkness hiding from the Electric Mary herself.
Watch Madonne Elettriche below:
The mixing of Madonna Elettriche was done by Nico Giordano and the mastering by Daniel Hallhuber using analogue and digital processes at the Young and Cold Records Studios.
Listen to Madonna Elettriche below and order the single here.
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