Hello my groovy babies! You didn’t expect to hear from me so soon , did you? Today is a very exciting day for my band The Kobras so I decided to share some of the insides with you 👀 Our new song New Religion is out TODAY as well as a very cool video we worked on really hard.
A little bit about the band first for those of you who are not familiar. Harry and I met in the stormy seas of 2020 London, combining my Bulgarian eastern mysticism and his British stiff upper lip cynicism. With a psychedelic-induced faith in love and oneness our music brings an authentic rock sound powerful enough to break down the warped mirrors of ones ego and get you grooving at the same time. You’ve got vocals from me, guitar by Harry, bass by Chloe and drums by our newest member Anton. Our influences range from The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix to Moon Duo and Gil Scott-Heron to The White Stripes to create our own unique sound.
We wrote New Religion as a satirical take on what we see as a trend to politicize all aspects of life as well as our modern political rhetoric, though the further you look back the less of a modern phenomena it appears to be and all that has changed is the language used and systems that employ them. This is why we used the aesthetic of a witch hunt from the 1800's for the music video. As we see all that media and politics focus on is what divides us and actively avoid addressing any real issues and the nuance with which real life issues contain. We want to use the song as a call for tolerance and unity, given that we are all in this Universe together, and to not fall for the tricks implemented to suppress our true interests to LOVE and APPRECIATE all life on Mother Earth.
Some facts about the actual witch hunts:
Conventional wisdom has chalked the killings up to a case of bad weather. Across Europe, weather suddenly got wetter and colder—a phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age that pelted villages with freak frosts, floods, hailstorms, and plagues of mice and caterpillars. Witch hunts tended to correspond with ecological disasters and crop failures, along with the accompanying problems of famine, inflation, and disease. When the going got tough, witches made for a convenient scapegoat.
Similar to how contemporary Republican and Democrat candidates focus campaign activity in political battlegrounds during elections to attract the loyalty of undecided voters, historical Catholic and Protestant officials focused witch-trial activity in confessional battlegrounds during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to attract the loyalty of undecided Christians. When it comes to winning people to your side, after all, there’s no better method than stoking fears about an outside threat—and then assuring them that you, and you alone, offer the best protection.
So desperate were the impoverished townsfolk to rid their town of devil-driven catastrophe, they offered to sell their communal forest to pay for the services of a renowned witch executioner, as eminent witch historian Wolfgang Berhringer recounts. Villagers trusted their institutions and the information they spread. Anyone who doubted the authorities was considered to be in a league with The Devil. Unfortunately for the tens of thousands tortured and burned, faith can easily mutate into fact.
They believed that the Devil always left a sign- a mole, a birth mark, which was used as an excuse when they couldn’t gather enough evidence.
Does it remind you of something? 👀
We recorded the song in November with Harri Chambers who also produced our first EP ‘The Mighty Kobras’. Have been sitting on that egg for a few months now 🐣
The video was shot by Petar Petrov who is a brilliant photographer and a dear friend and has taken most of our press pictures. Top dude!
Non of this would have been possible without a little help from our friends!!!
👫👨🏾🤝👨🏼👩🏽🤝👩🏻 Crowd: Chloe Tayali, Ana Pérez López, Ivan Merazchiev, Miguel Gomez, Lewis Campbell, Harry Brazier, Kat Terek Nuns: Katrina Volkova, Victoria Cueto Rodríguez
👹 Devil: Ivan Merazchiev
⛪️ Priest: Harry Thacker
🧙♀️ Witch: Dessy Baeva
Edit and cut: Dessy Baeva
More from The Kobras here:
👽 Youtube
👽 Spotify
Peace and Love
Dessy and The Kobras xx