…the sweet truth baby, THE HOLY KNIVES Born to Die
The Holy Knives Born to Die is available at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music.
by Walter Price
New Orleans-rooted, LA-based brothers Kody and Kyle Valentine, collectively known as The Holy Knives, have a recent single, “Born to Die”, that will transport you back to the era when Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Alien Sex Fiend, and The Sisters of Mercy cassettes paved your beater’s floorboards.
Call it Goth, Doom Rock, or gloom pop, but what is solid here is that this song is weighted heavily in the emotional turmoil the past couple of years have had on the song’s creators. In a lengthy Facebook post (18. August 2021), the band shares the track’s backstory, “We started this one in some deep dark late isolation days near the end of 2020 after watching taxi driver and blade runner back to back. we realized that those cityscapes and atmospheres visually represented what we were feeling inside so we tried to model the song after what those movies felt like, isolating, beautiful, powerful, dramatic, dark, gritty.
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“We had been locked away in our studio for most of the year focused on growing as artists and writers working on music pretty much constantly. and this song is the first glimpse of the growth and change we’ve undergone through that time.”
The duo continued, “It goes without saying that the year left everyone a bit alone and left questioning a lot about our lives and our society as a whole—quite dystopian times to be alive. born to die was made with the weight of all of those feelings of isolation, paranoia, and defeatedness that were and still are easy to succumb to. but after living through 2020, we learned a lot of lessons in gratefulness and had plenty of moments of realization that the bad times make us appreciate the good so much more and this song tries to embody that idea through the lyrics and the atmosphere. we’re born to die, but that’s alright.”
Produced by Ian Hultquist, “Born to Die” coerces your psyche into accepting that a slow heavy midnight rain is about to fall and, for the foreseeable future, may not stop. So, what should you do? Hide inside? Or face the storm head-on and negotiate the consequences of a new normal… no matter the length of its reign…
Stream this brooding, cinematic single as well as The Holy Knives’ Top Spotify Tracks, now at the GTC.
THE HOLY KNIVES
Band photo by Oscar Moreno Photography
THK are Kody and Kyle Valentine
Produced and mixed by Ian Hultquist
Mastered by Ruairi O’Flaherty
Strings by Ray Suen
Drums/perc by Keith Cooper
Drums/perc by Logan Baudean
Drum recording by Ben Barter
Cover photo by Jennifer Garza-Cuen
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There’s nowhere left for us to hide
The end is coming on so enjoy the ride
It feels so wrong but I know it’s right
It’s the sweet truth baby, we were only born to die…