Take my hand
Angels and demons have tried
We create our own design
The Devil has always been an enthusiastic gambler, particularly when the stakes involve somebody else’s eternal future. Across centuries of folklore, he has appeared at crossroads, in taverns, and beside the beds of ambitious men, offering arrangements whose disadvantages become apparent around the time the contract comes due. Chess, with its elaborate rules and opportunities for deception, seems particularly suited to his temperament. Every sacrifice has a purpose, every advance invites retaliation, and the unfortunate soul across the board must calculate how much of himself he can afford to lose.
In Angels + Demons (Arcana Remix), Galicia-based American darkwave artist C Z A R I N A revisits the work of American cinematic electropop duo Majestic Phoenix, contributing her own vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation to a composition concerned with fate, spiritual transformation, and the difficult business of deciding who gets to govern one’s existence.
C Z A R I N A’s interpretation supplies the confrontation with an appropriately extravagant musical vocabulary. Her commanding voice rises through theatrical electronic arrangements, drawing upon the dramatic sensibilities of Kate Bush, the ethereal grandeur of Lisa Gerrard, and the widescreen emotional sweep of Florence + The Machine. The music suggests an occult fairy tale unfolding at the edge of the known world, where every melodic ascent carries the possibility of revelation.
Produced and directed by The Kitsunés, the accompanying video pays homage to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), while drawing inspiration from Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch’s 1831 painting The Devil’s Checkmate, originally titled Die Schachspieler. Retzsch’s painting depicts a young man facing Satan across a chessboard, his immortal soul hanging in the balance as his adversary surveys the pieces with the confidence of someone who already knows the outcome. Bergman would later explore a similar predicament through a medieval knight who challenges Death to a game of chess, hoping to bargain for a little more time. Both works contemplate the uneasy relationship between free will and fate, raising a question that has troubled theologians, philosophers, and gamblers for centuries: how much freedom does a person possess when the rules have been established by somebody else?
The filmmakers transport this confrontation to Malpica de Bergantiños, along Galicia’s formidable Costa da Morte, where the Atlantic crashes against ancient coastal formations. A pilgrim travelling the Camino de Santiago encounters the Devil, and his spiritual expedition takes an unexpected detour into supernatural competition. Against the vastness of the coastline, their chessboard becomes a miniature arena for mankind’s oldest anxieties about temptation, judgment, and the possibility of redemption.
The video’s central wager also illuminates the remix’s larger preoccupation with inherited beliefs. To abandon an old conviction can resemble a small death; to replace it requires imagination, courage, and occasionally a willingness to disappoint the authorities, earthly or otherwise, who benefited from one’s obedience. At the Devil’s chessboard, destiny appears to have been calculated in advance. C Z A R I N A leaves us contemplating the delicious possibility that the pilgrim might yet overturn the board.
Watch the video for “Angels + Demons (Arcana Remix)” below:
Listen to Angels + Demons (Arcana Remix) below and order it here.
C Z A R I N A is the musical project of Vero Faye Kitsuné, a Philippine-born, New York-raised American singer, producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and filmmaker now based on Galicia’s Costa da Morte. Her background spans music, visual art, and a career as a fashion designer and creative director. Since her recording debut in 2018, she has developed an elaborate musical language encompassing gothic post-metal, orchestral darkwave, and ethereal dark synthpop, combining the weight of metal with orchestral arrangements and dark electronic textures. Mysticism, mythology, and alchemy inform her recordings and films, while cosmic and celestial imagery accompanies her explorations of destruction, transformation, rebirth, and transcendence. Albums including Arcana (2022) and Empire explore these interests on an increasingly ambitious scale. Alongside her husband, artist Carlos Kitsuné, also known as DeadlyKawaii, she co-runs The Kitsunés, the creative partnership behind her visual work.
Majestic Phoenix brings together composer and multi-instrumentalist Aaron McLean and producer and audio engineer Kent “Von” Hertzog, whose friendship and creative partnership began at the Art Institute of Philadelphia in 1999. Reuniting decades later, the American cinematic electropop duo returned to musical ideas left unfinished during their college years. Those recovered recordings, alongside new material, became their debut EP, Manifest, released in October 2025. McLean writes, performs, and produces the music, while Hertzog contributes co-production, mixing, and mastering at The Social Club, drawing on his background in audio engineering and hip-hop production. Their music combines electronic textures from earlier eras with contemporary arrangements, balancing melodic detail with atmosphere and emotional expression. Friendship, fate, and creative renewal inform the project, with subsequent releases inviting vocal collaborators into the partnership. Their association with The Kitsunés also extends to the duo’s artwork and visual identity.
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The post The Devil’s Checkmate — Majestic Phoenix and CZARINA Play an Infernal Game in Video for “Angels + Demons (Arcana Remix)” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
