The story is ancient, yet it cuts with fresh steel: Judith of Bethulia enters the tent of Holofernes, pours his goblet, watches him slump into stupor, and with his own sword severs the head that once commanded armies. The image has been carried across centuries of paint, sculpture, and scripture. Now it surfaces again, reborn in Judith With The Head of Holofernes, the keystone of their Altar De Fey‘s new album Under a Waxing Moon, out now on Transylvanian Recordings.
Altar De Fey (Kent Cates, Aleph Kali, Skot Brown, and Jake Hout) rose out of San Francisco’s early-eighties crucible of deathrock, and now, four decades on, they return with a record steeped in ritual cadence and theatrical menace. Eight tracks shape Under a Waxing Moon, each one walking the line between punk ferocity and the morbid pageantry of gothic rock. Guitars rake the air with serrated brilliance; basslines drive like an engine in the earth; drums strike with the steady insistence of procession and execution. Over it all, the voice cuts through with an incantatory edge; less sung than declared, summoning ruin, rebellion, and nocturnal rite.
At the center stands Judith With the Head of Holofernes, both parable and anthem. Its rhythm feels inexorable, like Judith’s own footsteps crossing the enemy camp. Tension swells, then breaks, releasing in sharp stabs of guitar and commanding voice. The song embodies the moment of the strike: the intoxication, the violence, the return with the severed head raised high.
Marcelle Marais’s companion video amplifies the spirit of the record with a stark black-and-white homage to silent cinema. Borrowing freely from Salome, Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, it revels in robes, veils, and grand theatrical gestures. Camp lingers at the edges, yet ceremony anchors the spectacle, blurring burlesque with ritual. Theda Bara’s coiled intensity and Francis X. Bushman’s hauteur echo through the frames, interspersed with tasty guitar solos from the band. Excess becomes allegory; exaggeration reveals truth. Cecil B. DeMille might blanch, but here artifice is wielded as both homage and subversion; reverent, mischievous.
The fable itself is embodied by Skye Seeley as Judith and frontman Jake Hout as Holofernes. Their performances bring myth into flesh: the seduction, the collapse, the severing stroke, and the victorious return. In Altar De Fey’s rendering, the legend becomes more than a tale preserved in paint and scripture. It becomes a sign of wit overturning tyranny, of beauty turned into its sharpest weapon against brute force.
Watch the video for Judith With The Head Of Holofernes below:
With Judith With The Head of Holofernes, Altar De Fey sharpens their legacy without embalming it. They take the fable of Judith, her blade still dripping with conquest, and extend it into the present moment, reminding us that deathrock’s ritual power lies not in nostalgia but in its capacity to unsettle, unsettle again, and rally courage against the siege.
Listen to Judith With The Head of Holofernes below and order Under A Waxing Moon here.
Catch Altar De Fey in Europe this autumn!
- Sept. 25 Bremen DE Friesenstrasse
- Sept. 26 Berlin DE Wild At Heart w/Totenwald
- Sept 27 Leipzig DE Zoro. DIYfest
- Sept 29 Wien AUT Chelsea
- Sept 30 Katawise PL Piati Dom w/KSY
- Oct 1 Warsaw PL Chummy. w/Past Old Skull
- Oct 2-4 Wroclaw PL Return to the Batcave Festival
Photos of Altar De Fay at A Murder of Crows Fest 2025:
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