Sisters of the Red Death

I got a live preview of the song “Silhouette Serenade” from Seattle’s Vendetta Red during a show in Sacramento last summer where the band was handing out free promos featuring the first single from the then unreleased new CD Sisters of the Red Death to a handful of fans. The heart-wrenching ballad provides a good snapshot of the haunting mood of the CD: “And I’ve been lonely like a silhouette, or a serenade, a heart attack, or a man betrayed.” The songs that front man Zach Davidson wrote for Sisters were inspired by a cult formed in Japan in the 1700s. The band sets a heavy guitar sound against Davidson’s powerful vocals and macabre yet beautifully scripted poems, with lines like, “So desperate to love but you can’t pretend that her hands weren’t claws. Your Madonna was Medusa in the end” from the track “Shiver.” Vendetta Red has crafted a themed album with songs that take you through dark twists and turns of taboo topics of violence and religion topped with catchy guitar riffs and feverish drums.