Perverts

Ethel Cain’s ninety minute plunge into drone, noise and slowcore, a study of shame, desire and the body made to be sat inside rather than sung along to.

Track by track

Perverts12:04
The record opens on a warped recording of Nearer, My God, to Thee, the hymn sung as if from another room, then lets it decay into static and drone. A prayer left running until it stops sounding like comfort.
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Punish6:40
The lead single, a slow piano dirge sung barely above a whisper, and the closest thing here to a song from the records around it. Shame studied at close range, punishment and love folded into the same gesture.
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Housofpsychoticwomn13:35
Thirteen minutes of noise with a voice buried inside it, repeating its devotion until the words stop behaving like language. Love as static, tenderness that starts to read as threat.
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Vacillator7:44
The record at its warmest, a slow, heavy love song about wanting to be held and fearing what follows. Closeness offered and flinched from in the same breath.
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Onanist6:24
Desire turned back on itself, the wanting body examined without flinching. It asks what worship is worth when you are the only one at the altar.
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Pulldrone15:14
Fifteen minutes of raw, keening drone beneath a spoken litany, the long dark centre of the record. Less a song than an ordeal, and meant as one.
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Etienne8:43
A clearing after the drone, tape hiss and gentle guitar with a voice speaking low underneath. The record’s one soft touch, offered like an apology.
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Thatorchia7:24
Voices massed into a slow, hovering choir over drone. Grief and awe held at the same low frequency.
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Amber Waves11:32
The long exhale of a closer, hazy and half lit, its title tilting the anthem’s amber waves of grain toward something bruised. The record ends not saved but still breathing.
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About the record

Perverts is Ethel Cain’s first long form release after Preacher’s Daughter, released January 8, 2025 on Daughters of Cain Records. It steps outside the Alabama saga entirely, trading heartland songwriting for drone, dark ambient, noise and slowcore across nine tracks and nearly ninety minutes.

Its subject is the body and its shames, desire, self pleasure, the ache to be wanted and the fear of being seen. It is her bleakest record and her most demanding, music built like a room you sit in with the lights off, and the clearest sign that the project answers to no one’s expectations.

per·ver·sion /pərˈvərʒən/ noun: the turning of something from its original course, meaning, or state into a distortion of what was first intended.