Melbourne’s Sex Mask returns with a short, sharp jolt to the heart. Their new single “Circe” is a spell cast in distortion and folk myth, a punchy post-punk howl that surges through its run time like a flaming chariot. Spare, at just over three minutes long, “Circe” is chaos-rendered art.
The track does not pull any punches, ripping wide open with jagged guitars that seem to be trying to claw their way out of the speakers. The energy is all-out fire, with a few calculations, a scorched mixture of alt-rock grit and post-punk sneer. It’s loud, it’s raw, but never sloppy. Even in the chaos, every second feels deliberate. The beating heart of it all is Wry Gray’s vocal, a half-sung, half-snapped delivery dripping in frustration and something less savory. Taking its cue from Homer’s Odyssey, Gray reframes the mythic figure of Circe, the sorceress who turns men into beasts, as a vessel for postbreakup projection. This is mythology repurposed for emotional catharsis.
Gray refined this idea into self-describing, turning to classic literature to give 21st-century heartbreak a wink. Where others might presume to paint the ex as the bad guy, Sex Mask instead flips the lens inward, exposing the monster we may become in the aftermath of love gone wrong.
“Circe” is surreal and incisive, working in rich symbolism without veering into abstraction. It’s poetry with a knife, and the band’s economical musicianship creates space for it to cut. There’s something unclassifiable at work here, something that lifts a figurative hat to early punk but twists it into something darker, more theatrical, like Sex Mask.
“Circe” insists on being felt as a raw wound, a longed-for memory you buried too deep. It’s antagonistic, vulnerable, mythic, but above all, honest. In a universe of glossed-over heartbreak anthems, Sex Mask is honest, messy, and mythically furious.
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