We discovered The Moths last year during their performance at Smoking Dragon Festival. Our inquisitiveness was met with disappointment upon discovering that the band hadn’t released any of their music officially, which meant there was no way we could continue the experience we had watching them at Smoking Dragon Festival.
On the 14th January 2014, the band rectified the situation releasing their debut EP, Beware Of. The EP is a collection of 7 tracks recorded in June 2012 at Asylum Studios in Pretoria. The EP was recorded in two lives session with a couple of overdubs added at a later stage. It seems like the right decision was made as the group released the free album on bandcamp at the crest of all the buzz surrounding their project.
Our Track Of The Week, The Phoenix Strangler, is the 4th on the EP. The track is just under 2 and a half minutes long, and as most tracks on the EP, it is constructed around the primitive rolling 4/4 rhythm of the bass and drums. Classic to the category of surf rock, the song relies on the reverb-drenched tremolo cadence of the guitar.
The Phoenix Strangler would not be out of place at the introduction of the villian in a 60s bond film. Incidentally, Phoenix Strangler was the moniker given to Sipho Twala, who was convicted to 506 years in prison on the count of 16 rapes and 10 murders he committed during 1996. He went on a year-long killing spree in the sugarcane fields of Mount Edgecombe near the town of Phoenix in Kwazulu Natal.
Rumour has it that if you skank throughout the duration of the song, you will see the reflection of the all the Phoenix Stranglers victims in a broken mirror.
