CODEX SERAFINI - MOTHER, GIVE YOUR CHILDREN SANITY


 


Codex Serafini’s second album Mother, Give Your Children Sanity builds on the stylistic foundations of debut The Imprecation of Anima while allowing new variations in tone and accessibility. The saxophone blasts of opener ‘Pitying Them for Giving Life’ immediately bring 70s space rock progenitors like Hawkwind and Gong to mind, but within a context brought up to date with elements from contemporary experimental metal. The mythic portends and ritualistic atmosphere of Belgian doom outfit Wyatt E. or New York’s blackened psych jazz-metal fusioneers Imperial Triumphant suggest parallels for Codex Serafini’s surreal heaviness.

According to the band statement: “This album grew from our shared, deep connection to one another and reflects both the power of nature and the struggles we all experience as human beings on this planet.” Lyrics have become progressively discernable since the group’s 2021 EP Invisible Landscape. The female lead singer (as anonymous as the other members of this Sussex-based group) sounds close to the Goth stridency of Siouxsie on this release. Jungian analysis seemed to inspire the thematic pitch of The Imprecation of Anima. There isn’t such a detectable philosophical influence on Mother, but the lyrics often imply a similar internal dialogue between psychological archetypes. The title track could be a plea to nature to save us from ourselves, bringing about spiritual unity through the integration of ego and shadow.

Producer Wayne Adams adds delectable techniques like distorted/backwards cymbal sizzle, eddies of phaser guitar on ‘Cause and Effect’, borrowing from the otherworldly sonic canvasses of contemporary neo-psych masters like Acid Mothers Temple and The Mars Volta. The lyrics of ‘Keep the Mask that Fits - shades of Om in its bass mantra - express conflict over pressure to fit parental molds. Its formal unorthodoxy gives voice to resistance through inventive dynamics and the slow, treacly entropy of its conclusion – three minutes of phantasmal diminuendo. ‘Alpha Sista with the Heel to the Mouth First’, by contrast, uses funk metal groove redolent of Primus in their 90s prime to sonically buttress its diatribe against fake feminist solidarity.

Instrumental closer ‘Marching Like a Toad’ recalls Amon Düül II with its percussion-driven mantric urgency before dropping out into resonant void at the half-way mark. The doomy drones of this dark ambient conclusion sound fashioned from time stretched gong decay. We could be listening to the album’s immersive afterglow. It’s a fitting summation of the group’s dualistic embrace of pop flirtation and aesthetic challenge.

Text: (C) Copyright by Jon Kromka 2026

 

Mother, Give Your Children Sanity is out now physically through Riot Season Records and digitally through Slow Thee Music, and is available on Bandcamp:  

https://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/album/mother-give-your-children-sanity

 

https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mother-give-your-children-sanity




Here can be found the video for 'Keep the Mask that Fits':



And here are Codex Serafini's 2026 tour dates:



Ticket info is here:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

JUNGFRAU - S/T

Image
  Hannah Louise Grasskamp’s songs are enigmatic Gothic pop confections, blending euphoric impressions of fairy tale magic with undercurrents of intrigue and threat. Fantastic motifs like ice giants and underwater kingdoms are invoked, but unlike most fairy tales, the songs do not present neat resolutions or a coherent moral didactic purpose. They follow a darkwave tradition wherein imagery from childhood fantasy serves to illustrate adult existential concerns – think Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure at their most conflicted and chilling.  Grasskamp’s Brighton-based band Jungfrau has acquired a new focus with its shrinkage from quintet to a trio featuring the vocalist, Matt McCartney on bass, and Timothy Cottrell on synthesizer, and live and programmed drums. Their new self-titled release features five tracks that herald a directional shift. Shades of hypnagogic pop and darkwave’s cross-fertilization with post-metal now overlay and complement the drone-oriented neo-psyc...
Read more

THE BRACKISH - PACK IT IN MY LIEGE

Image
  Pack It in My Liege , the sixth album by Bristol-based avant-rockers The Brackish, exhibits the latest iteration of the multifarious instrumental rock first assayed on their 2014 debut Big Guys . In contrast with the freeform passages of Donor Zone , this Pig Records release demonstrates greater compositional rigour and the tightening of a quartet approaching reinforced steel levels of sturdiness. Brackish sound is ultimately a pliable material; if this release favours drones over jams, the next may see another reversal in polarity. Pack It in My Liege tilts the balance towards control, but with no loss in creative boldness. It features six tracks like surrealist paintings: epic yet contained visions of adventurous weirdness. ‘Welter’ opens proceedings in a suitably stormy fashion, operating from some nexus spanning post-hardcore, neo-psych and math rock and conjuring shades of acts as disparate as Sonic Youth and This Heat. The twin guitars of Luke Cawthra and Neil Smith ...
Read more

SLIDERS - S/T

Image
    Sliders is a new Bristol-based group that teams guitarist Neil Smith of The Brackish with Chris Langton on drums, Harry Stoneham on bass, and Dan Moore on keyboards. Like The Brackish, Sliders use jazz – in both its compositional and improvisatory faculties – as a catalytic aesthetic to merge various categories of experimental rock (psych, prog, kraut, postpunk, post-rock). Both are instrumental groups that shift between and intermingle heavy and playful tones; there’s an enviable balance that allows grittier, shadier textures to keep the imagination engaged before light-heartedness drifts into mere effervescence. If there’s a significant difference, Sliders lean more into improvisational looseness on their self-titled debut album than the math rock-ish complexity The Brackish can indulge in. Moore is a member of the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble. His Moog Sub 37 Paraphonic synth lines on opener ‘Jumper’ – drifting in and out of the jagged intervals of Smith’s arpeggios – evo...
Read more