Enter Mephistopheles

Overcome by innocence and purity

On a hell-bent path led to corrupt

To destroy us all and rise above

Goth music has always been hospitable to transformation: flesh into apparition, desire into doctrine, the nightclub into a temporary chapel. Pittsburgh industrial project ShadowMouth and Cleveland vocal trio The Elder Goths take that appetite for metamorphosis literally on The Promise of Alchemy/The Death of Chemistry, a paired single released August 12th and the final preview of ShadowMouth’s forthcoming debut album, Modern Alchemy.

ShadowMouth is the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Rick Polo, of Baroque Monody and Heck Vektor, with producer and drummer Brooks Farris of Electric Fox Studios. After the 2024 EP Purification By Fire and singles including Your Words, Not Mine and DOOM SCROLLERS vs HOLY ROLLERS, Polo reached outside his immediate circle for these two pieces, contacting The Elder Goths: Cassandra Bishop, Laura O’Janpa, and Gina Schultz, without having met them.

“These songs were the result of me taking a shot in the dark and reaching out The Elder Goths group, who I had never met before, and asked if they would provide some of the striking beautifully haunting harmonies that are immediately apparent when first hearing their work,” says Polo. “But it turned out to be so much more than I could have imagined. The end result was an intense and and really heartfelt delivery which absolutely blew me away. This collaboration felt too important not to highlight. So we decided to release this a single ahead of the record.”

That gamble pays off immediately on The Promise of Alchemy. Aphex Twin-like electronics move beneath spare guitar passages while Bishop’s lyrics describe awakening, perception, and the search for one’s place within a larger atmosphere. The Elder Goths bring an elegant, spectral grandeur that recalls Strange Boutique, Faith and the Muse, and the ceremonial scale of Dead Can Dance. Their layered voices give Polo’s machinery a sense of upward motion, turning alchemy into a metaphor for people entering the same space and becoming altered by the encounter.

The Death of Chemistry, with lyrics by Schultz, pushes the collaboration toward darker territory. Its language circles blindness, consumption, manipulation, predation, and the dangerous seductions of appearances. Mephistopheles enters as an emblem of corruption, while bodily warnings – alarm, dread, instinctive recoil – suggest a consciousness struggling to recognize danger before persuasion overrides perception. The final image of being taken in by a “suntan and a grin” gives the song a wickedly contemporary sting: evil may arrive beautifully groomed, socially fluent, and camera-ready.

Together, the songs form a compact study in attraction and corruption. One considers transformation as revelation; the other examines how easily perception can be bent by charisma, appetite, and spectacle. This tension gives the collaboration a compelling force, especially because the music itself began with an act of trust between strangers.

Listen below and purchase the double single here.

Formed in 2024 after its members crossed paths through Cleveland’s underground scene, The Elder Goths will perform at Pagan Pride Fest in Cleveland on August 15th. Their appearance on Modern Alchemy gives ShadowMouth’s coming album an intriguing final preview: four musicians meeting across projects and cities, testing what might happen when unfamiliar elements are placed in the same vesse

The post ShadowMouth and The Elder Goths Collaborate on Twin Tracks “The Promise of Alchemy and The Death of Chemistry” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.