Haunt Me

Austin, TX-based new 3-piece band HAUNT ME embrace and channel the obscurity and sorrow of the Pandemic times into a gloomy darkling post-punk sound ‘drawing inspiration from classic legendary bands such as Joy Division, The Smiths, The Cure and Bauhaus as well as from more modern bands such as Interpol, She Wants Revenge and Soft Kill”.

The trio have just released, almost in one go, their debut EP “Vampires At Your Door” together with four brand new singles, available on all the major streaming platforms.

Fueled by dynamic and evocative instrumentation, sometimes cutting and abrasive, sometimes brooding and immersive, the singer perfectly adapts his enticing vibrant voice to different emotional moods conveyed by the lyrics with an extreme and obsessive, yet sincere approach, from the brooding and longing in isolation of “Our Ghosts”, the lovey-dovey comfort of “Dying In Your Arms”, to the numbing submerged pain of “Slave to the Blade” and the lust-driven energy of “Surrender to the Night”.

Sinister and bewitching at the same time, “Surrender to the Night” creeps inside an obsessive, hypnotic and cinematic slow pace led by the relentless sharp beats of a tense and crackling rhythm and subdued, ritual rolling percussive patterns, plagued by wandering swathes of penetrating and eerie, slightly twisted, keyboard whines, interspersed with eerie jingling and dazzling synth chords along with bleak abrasive guitar riffs, whilst dark, airy, insanely magnetic male vocals persist with allure and compulsion into the haunted limits of erotic pain. - White Light//White Heat

The musical brainchild of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Darius Davila, musical trio Haunt Me fuses post-punk, darkwave, indie and alternative into a sonic tapestry that transforms into a funeral shroud. This Sadness Never Ends is a plunge into the dark waters of agonizing melancholia.

Little is known about this Austin-based band, but the mystery lends itself well to its overall brooding sound. Davila’s croon is a soothing balm to the minor chords that accompany his bleak lyrics. The famous Rene Magritte image of The Lovers – two enshrouded people kissing – was rooted in trauma the teenage Magritte suffered as he witnessed his mother’s body recovered from the Sambre River, entangled in the cloth of her dress. This became a recurring motif in his work, a testament to lost life, lost love, and the fragility of the psyche. This haunting painting, in turn, sets the scene for Haunt Me’s album about loss, obsession, isolation, and mortality.

Opening strong with “Dying In Your Arms”, the lyrics take a typical love song into dark territory by comparing it with the death of the soul. “Our Ghosts” hop across the veil, describing the absence of love as a phantasmic torture; a pleading for return. This motif is repeated with “Nothing Lasts” and “Clementine; Dancing In The Dark” addresses toxicity in relationships leading to misery; Into The Black is the realization of and coming to terms with the prospect of isolation in grief; “Destroy Me” continues this rumination; the titular song dives deeper into grief and regrets; and the closing track is a primal howl of “why?”

This is the music you put on when you’re going through it and need someone to pour you some tea and sympathy; it is not an album for new love or even satisfactory love – it is a powerful exorcism of absolute despair, beautifully performed. There are elements of Joy Division and The Cure in the sound, and the lo-fi atmosphere brings to mind Dirty Beaches, but the poetic, narrative songwriting has much more in common with the pathos of Nick Cave and the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan. - Post-Punk.com