Having built a career for herself as a professional horror effects makeup artist, CrowJane’s music draws on a similar set of influences to create a darkly surreal brand of post-punk. With influences ranging from death rock, darkwave, and L.A. based punk, her Mater Dolorosa debut album presents a naked and vulnerable lyrical sensibility offset by experimental arrangements of disparate and noisy elements, exemplified by the album’s first single and video, “Terminal Secrets.” Having made its premiere on August 18 on Post-Punk.com, the video’s blend of stop-motion and pixel animation by Jenny Nirgends and Phoebe Jane Hart, as well as the body painting skills of Ashley Hooker, serves to augment the song’s lyrical and conceptual core, reflecting the idea “that a person can have a smile on their face, but be screaming on the inside.” Citing the inspiration of The Brothers Quay and Peter Gabriel’s groundbreaking videos, CrowJane further explains the video’s transformative effects not only portrays the themes of becoming monstrous on the journey to attain “money, power, security, validation, fame, ‘success,’” but also the song’s instrumental qualities, stating that “I wanted to write a song that played around with vocal loops as a rhythm.”
