Disemballerina's "That Is The Head Of One Who Toyed With My Honor" is a Brutally Beautiful Revenge Song

Photo by Jake McCune / courtesy of Disemballerina

Disemballerina is the kind of band that turns fans into obsessives—the kind of band whose songs you play on repeat over and over again, as if lost in a dream. The Portland trio's last album, Undertaker, was a revelation of gloom; pensive, moody, and desperately beautiful, it combined the gentle, refined lilt of chamber music and neoclassical innovation with the most mournful funerary atmosphere imaginable. Worm Ouroboros and Amber Asylum are easy touchpoints, but really, nothing else in the world sounds like the perfect storm that arises when Ayla Holland's guitar and bajo quinto meet Myles Donovan's viola and harp and Jennifer Christensen's weeping cello.

It was crushing in its sadness, its fragility, its subject matter; these wordless tales of poison, dementia, murder, destructive love, and queerness moved me, and moved quite a few other people, too. A vinyl version was recently made available by Graceless Recordings, and now, the band is preparing to release its successor, Poison Gown. I'm immensely proud to premiere a new song, titled "That Is The Head Of One Who Toyed With My Honor," below.

Myles Donovan explained the cryptic-seeming title, telling us via email that, "It's a piece that was inspired by this news story about an anonymously-reported woman in Turkey who decapitated her own rapist following periods of photographic blackmail and humiliation. The title is the phrase she said after throwing his head into the town square. More than just a great words for living, we thought it was a fantastic symbolic response to the resulting shame and preserving silence of rape culture, and it definitely resonated with all of us on some deep personal levels."

"I love the slow build of power that radiates from this song—playing it live always feels like casting a weird spell, and it was written in hopes of inspiring other survivors who can relate. Sharpening a machete in the background was fun, too. Our new record is somewhat revenge-themed, so we thought this would make for a fitting first listen," he added.

Kim Kelly is listening to this song on repeat.; she's also on Twitter - @grimkim