While many men continue to suppress their emotions under the watchful eye of the patriarchy, Kailan Price wears his heart on his sleeve. As the lead singer-songwriter of Northampton post-punk band bloody/bath, Price has poured an abundance of grief, angst, and vulnerability into their debut album, In An Empty Space I’m Screaming. It’s a fitting title, conjuring up ideas of a desperate, guttural cry into an achingly vast abyss, offering ten songs primed for powerful introspection and liberation.
The first three tracks throw us straight into bloody/bath’s eerie underworld, grappling with complex themes of religion and loneliness. With its pulsating drums and menacing vocals, “Strangling of the Dog” presents candidly pessimistic reflections on mental health: “I’m withered with dread / Amongst the cold loneliness / It’s careless to care / Alone, in this heavy head.” This twisted darkness persists in “Suffering,” with lyrics capturing feelings of misery, shame, and isolation; against razor-sharp guitar melodies, Price slices his chest open and puts his heart on the line, helpless and despairing while “the eyes of God are watching,” cold and detached. It’s upfront and unashamedly bleak, but the faster tempo adds a pang of feverish energy to the track, generating a more cathartic sense of emotional release. In the following track, “Body,” Price continues wrestling with religion, repeating, “My Lord there always watching / Watching me / My Lord there always is Watching / Watching me” as he tries to come to terms with the idea of God as an inescapable, omnipresent observer. Enhanced by heavy, thumping drums and gritty guitars, bloody/bath captures the claustrophobia of being constantly perceived and scrutinized while trapped in an inadequate human form.
With sinister sounds expanding and contracting across In An Empty Space I’m Screaming, “A Dream” ushers in gentler female vocals, offering some ephemeral lightness after heavy intense tracks. Sonically, it is slower, calmer, but its lyrics are as hard-hitting as we’d expect from bloody/bath: “Hold me / I’ll sink or swim / You washed off sin / With your lips on my cheek / I’m empty / I watch you, I watched you sleeping / You crash the car, tell me you’re leaving.” Price’s brooding bitterness beneath a softer surface creates striking dissonance; this reflects a tension that may indicate his delicate mental state, oscillating between tenderness and turbulence to connect with listeners, pointing out the pain we can often carry under more composed exteriors.
Continuing his pursuit of uninhibited self-expression, “Idle Hands” meshes the indistinct, otherworldly vocals of shoegaze with the dark danciness of post-punk bands like Molchat Doma or Joy Division. Price’s more distant, detached vocals reveal a different side to him, stripping back the anger to shed light on the exhaustion and disorientation that can come with mental illness. This is a brilliantly haunting combination—Price sings of bruising, sinking into skin, and screaming into emptiness while layers of infectious guitars melt into one another, driven forward by an unfaltering drum beat. This frantic yet macabre sound persists in “Unholy Cross II,” where Price reverts back to his typical bellowing voice, treading a fine line between singing and chanting as he dispels his inner demons with emotive desperation: “Nothing real / Cutting through / Nothing real / Body bruised / Body used / Knuckles blue / Cutting through / It’s no use.”
The penultimate track “Heaven” is the shortest on the album, offering a brief moment of relief similar to “A Dream,” but this time through more stripped-back, hazy instrumentals and no vocals at all. This is a significant contrast to earlier songs, providing some clarity among the chaos. Listeners may be fooled into thinking that this is the happy ending to In An Empty Space I’m Screaming until the final track creeps up reminding us that journeys through grief and mental illness are anything but linear. “Slow Death II” also opens with a sparser soundscape, but gradually builds into something more gripping. “I’m forced to see you fade / With every breath I take / I’d give it all away / To see you wake / It’s a slow death / It’s a slow death / It’s a slow death / Nothing’s left”; Price’s voice flips from singing to shouting before the track descends into crashing instrumentals embodying a fervent emotional exorcism. As the song finishes, guitars, drums, and vocals slowly fizzle out—In An Empty Space I’m Screaming ends with a poignant emptiness to suggest Price has screamed all of the pain out, or exhausted himself trying.
“It pulls and scratches / From a shallow grave / In the depths of my head / An existence of pain.” These lyrics from the lead single “Suffering” encapsulate bloody/bath’s coherent sound and vision of a dark space where emotional honesty is embraced. While Price’s psychological turmoil is depicted as something deep-rooted, perhaps even innate, it’s clear his need to make music is equally unrelenting, scratching its way to a raw, bloody surface. In An Empty Space I’m Screaming triumphs with its juxtaposition of disturbing production and relatable lyrics providing a degree of comfort for those who listen closely. The result is an utterly intoxicating album that drags you to the murky depths of gothic post-punk and holds your hand while you’re down there.
