SATANIC PLANET have released "Church Burning", the latest single from "Dead Deities", out October 30 via Relapse Records, with a video directed by Rodrigo Espinosa.
The title is not a posture. It is a description of something that happened.
"In 2022, a man wearing a t-shirt with 'GOD' printed across the chest set fire to The Satanic Temple headquarters, a legally recognized church, in Salem," says Lucien Greaves, the Temple's co-founder and spokesperson, who handles vocals here. "This is a song about the hypocrisy of religious violence and how our opposition destroy their own ethical credibility every time they have attacked us with arson, bombs, and violent assaults. We will always rebuild. It is their own church they burn."
The band around him is a strange and formidable assembly: Luke Henshaw of PLANET B, Dave Lombardo — SLAYER, MISFITS, MR. BUNGLE, DEAD CROSS — and Justin Pearson of THE LOCUST and DEAD CROSS. "Dead Deities" is the first record they made fully together in a studio rather than by assembly, and it sounds like it: tolling bells, blackened synth, noise interludes, Lombardo's drums sitting under everything like geology, and group vocals arranged for maximum unpleasantness.
The first single, "Sam Alito's Mom", is named after the US Supreme Court justice who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, and comes with its own paper trail. "In an effort to preserve reproductive rights in the face of theocratic opposition, The Satanic Temple has opened three abortion clinics and is currently working toward opening a fourth," Greaves says. "We named the first of our clinics 'Sam Alito's Mom's Satanic Abortion Clinic', and following the opening of the fourth clinic, we are going to sue to establish our religious freedom to ship abortion pharmaceuticals to any state in the U.S. regardless of their restrictions on bodily autonomy. This is our fight, and this is our song about that fight."
Whatever else it is, "Dead Deities" is a record with a legal strategy attached, which is not a sentence that applies to many albums.
"Dead Deities" track listing:
- Damnatio Memoriae
- Antichrist
- Church Burning
- Dead Deities
- Sam Alito's Mom
- Headless Man
- Dr. Green
- Cannibal Syndrome
- Ouroboros
- Ammosexual
- Satan's Spawn