Skip to main content

Vengeance Wears a Veil: St. October - Sweet Succubi (Track Review) Released: 9/13/24

 


St. October has always understood that darkness is most dangerous when it's beautiful, and "Sweet Succubi" might be the purest expression of that truth they've ever put to tape. The first track revealed from their upcoming concept album, Salem, "Sweet Succubi," takes the condemned and resurrects them not as victims, but as something far more terrifying. Where "Burn" placed the listener at the stake, powerless and accused, this track tears the narrative open from the other side. The witches are back, they've gathered their coven, and they are not interested in forgiveness. This is St. October at their most seductive and most sinister, wielding melody and menace in equal measure to tell the story of an evil seductress who calls her sisters together for one purpose: retribution against those who lit the fires in the first place.

Monica Leibert is the beating heart of "Sweet Succubi," and her performance here is a masterclass in controlled danger. Where "Burn" asked her to embody grief and defiance, this track demands something altogether different. She is the seductress, the lure, the velvet trap closing slowly around its prey. Her vocals carry an intoxicating quality, simultaneously inviting and threatening, the kind of voice that makes you lean in before you realize you should have run. She is not pleading here. She is summoning. Dustin Leibert's guitar work matches her energy with devastating precision, weaving melodic passages that feel almost tender before erupting into riffs that carry the full weight of long-nursed fury. His playing is the coven assembling in real time, each phrase another figure stepping out of the treeline, until the circle is complete and there is nowhere left to go.

The rhythm section gives "Sweet Succubi" its ceremonial momentum, the sense that something ancient and unstoppable has been set into motion. Summerson's bass carries a low, predatory pulse beneath the track, less like a march and more like a stalking, patient, deliberate, closing in. His lines have a seductive quality of their own, drawing the listener deeper into the song's dark gravity before the full force of the band lands. Pement's drumming threads the needle between ritual and rampage, his patterns shifting fluidly from hypnotic, processional grooves to explosive bursts that mirror the moment restraint finally gives way to rage. He understands that the most effective revenge isn't frantic, it's measured, and then it's total. His performance makes sure the listener feels both.

"Sweet Succubi" is a stunning counterpart to "Burn," and together the two tracks reveal just how ambitious and narratively rich Salem promises to be. Where one track mourns, this one exacts. Where one track burns, this one consumes. St. October has crafted something that flips the power dynamic of the Salem Witch Trials mythology entirely, giving voice not to the condemned in their final moments, but to the condemned reborn in their most formidable form. The Iowa quartet continues to prove that blackened death metal can carry genuine storytelling weight: haunting, heavy, and relentlessly melodic, "Sweet Succubi" doesn't just demand your attention. It enchants it, and it doesn't let go.


Here is the official music video for the track Sweet Succubi: 

Go give them a follow on Instagram: St. October

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kentucky's Heavy Secret: Stormtoker - These Edibles Ain't Shit (EP Review) Released: 12/5/25

  Lexington, Kentucky, isn't exactly the first city that comes to mind when you think of the sludge and stoner metal underground, but Stormtoker seems intent on changing that. Their EP These Edibles Ain't Shit arrives like a slow, crushing wave of amplifier worship and chemically-assisted existential dread, and it makes a compelling case that the Bluegrass State has something mean and heavy brewing beneath its surface. Stormtoker is a fierce, impassioned force of nature, a band that feels like devout disciples of Ozzy Osbourne who came of age at the turn of the millennium but refused to let the roots of heavy metal die.  With sonic DNA tracing back to Cream, Hendrix, King Crimson, and even Arthur Brown, they summon an alluring sound that entrances as much as it pummels. This is a band equally at home in the sludge pit and the alt-rock headspace, a melodic restlessness running beneath the downtuned grime that keeps things unpredictable and owing as much to the 90s alternative u...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Long Way to Simple: SMFC -The First Four Songs (EP Review) Released: 2/20/26 (Part 1) & 3/27/26 (Part 2)

  There's something refreshingly unpretentious about calling your debut EP The First Four Songs . No cryptic title, no elaborate concept, no attempt to manufacture mystique out of thin air. Just Steev Custer, a guitarist with more than thirty years of Chicago scene credibility behind him, putting his work in front of you and letting it speak for itself. In an era when even the smallest releases arrive wrapped in press releases thick with buzzwords and carefully curated influences, that kind of directness feels almost radical. Custer is not a new name to anyone who's paid attention to the Chicago punk and rock underground, and his fingerprints are all over the city's musical history with names such as Death and Memphis, The Bomb, and My Big Beautiful. It's a lengthy résumé that spans post-punk, power pop, and everything in between, but these are bands built on the premise that a great song is worth more than a great concept, and that ethos carries directly into SMFC, his...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Bonfire Built for Burning Down Egos: Saving Vice - Straw Dogs (Track Review) Released: 10/4/25

Saving Vice is the embodiment of metalcore excellence and a powerhouse rising out of New England, specifically Burlington, Vermont, and they've never been afraid to get confrontational, but “Straw Dogs” is the band at their most venomous, theatrical, and unapologetically hostile. Consisting of Tyler Small, Robbie Litchfield, Alex Chan, and Sam Willey, the band channels pure contempt into a track that feels like a ritual execution set to music. If Saving Vice’s catalog is a gallery of emotional extremes, “Straw Dogs” is the piece where the frame catches fire. This song in particular revolves around a single yet brutal idea: some people are built of nothing but dry straw, and all it takes is a spark to expose how hollow they really are. The narrator tears into a target who poses as powerful but collapses under scrutiny, and this is someone loud, insecure, and inflated by their own myth. The imagery is vicious: boiling blood, collapsing thrones, paper crowns, inbred worms, a few co...
Post a Comment
Read more