The Feast of St. Perpetua

Newly signed to indie heavyweights Heist or Hit (Westside Cowboy, Her’s, Nature TV), Mleko ramp up the emotional velocity with their debut EP: ‘The Feast of St. Perpetua’. Recorded at Low Four Studios by Samuel William Jones (Maruja, Robin Richards) every song carries the dissonance of beauty and violence, sincerity and sarcasm, collapse and uplift. On ‘As It Goes’ Whirledge’s vocals splinter between detachment and despair, dragging the listener through the detritus of young adulthood, where direction is a rumour and hope has all the authenticity of a spam email. The tension-and-release continues with ‘Gub Rock’. The murky, semi-apocalyptic bass line drives the track onwards with an uncanny unease while Whirledge calmly orates: “as I tie myself to rocks and fill my pockets full of gravel.” From all the industrial sludge and drone-adjacent art-rock emerges ‘Tom’s Tune’ which, in a flagrant disregard for genre boundaries, bounces in on a bubble of plucked neo-folk guitar before attending its own MLEKO-sanctioned exorcism. “I reverberate around in echo-chambers now” screams Whirledge, a line destined for tattoos and nihilistic t-shirts. ‘Lego Sex’ “As a young boy, Rory was caught with ‘Lego sex’ written into his YouTube search history. At his 21st birthday, this story was told. After prompts from the band, Rory put pen to paper and ‘created’ a suspiciously detailed legophilic character who did not grow out of this interest. The song was to be told from this perspective, detailing the anguish stemming from the unfuckable figurines and preference for plastic over flesh – an unwavering grin”. Unfortunately, lines such as “cock blocked from my block cock” didn’t make the final cut. The song is not commentary. It is entirely separate, isolated from the unforgiving outside. Leave him to his lego sex. Just let him watch his lego sex. ‘Denouement’ brings the EP full circle, calling back to musical motifs established in ‘As It Goes’. It’s here that the part pagan ritual, part art school thesis meltdown draws to a close. “The children all weep for their denouement and these obscene, violent scenes, splitting the night like a silent dream.” utters Whirledge in the final line of this black mass.