Last year, I had written quite a bit about Holy Wars, led by Connecticut-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter Kat Leon, and as you may recall, Leon initially developed a reputation for writing material that focused largely on her obsessions with death and the occult as one-half the of the Los Angeles-based electro pop act Sad Robot. Leon’s critically applauded Holy Wars debut Mother Father was influenced by some of the darkest days of her life — when she was reeling from the sudden losses of her mother and father, who both died within months of each other. Building upon the attention she received here and elsewhere with Mother Father, Leon’s latest Holy Wars single “Born Dark” was produced by AFI’s Hunter Burgan, and while arguably being among the slickest produced singles she’s released, the arena rock friendly, hook-driven track is centered by propulsive tribal drumming, buzzing power chords and Leon’s pop star-like powerhouse vocals — and sonically the song manages to nod at Nine Inch Nails, Garbage and Siouxsie and the Banshees in a self-assured and ambitious fashion.
The track reportedly finds Leon going back to her roots — literally — as she explores the very moment of her birth, with the possibility that she may have been a bit of a bad seed, if not devilish, complete with a “don’t give a single fuck” swagger. Interestingly, the recently released video, directed by Kat Leon and Mel Hummel stars Leon as a murderous femme fatale/Barbie doll-type, pointing at the unrealistic representations of what women are supposed to be, act and look.
As Leon explains in press notes, “Growing up, little girls were given fashion dolls to play with as an expectation of what ‘women’ were supposed to look like and act like. It was an unrealistic representation of what we actually are and early on there were no variety to these dolls. There were no gothic or ‘darker’ dolls for years, or gender bending or anything other than what that skinny, blonde bubbly doll represented… the subtle brainwashing of our society. ‘Born Dark’ starts with the original pageant beauty queen doll but this doll carries a dark secret… she is a seductive killer with a thirst for blood. It all starts where the crown is given to another doll and our Born Dark Beauty grabs her first kill for the crown. The journey continues with each character introduced furthering the story of just how dark this doll is. Playing on the dark nature of the song, we decided to go with an overall moody, edgy and vintage vibe for the video starting with the French foreign film introduction to the song. The music video blends the reality between doll vs. human with foreshadowing and FX where the audience is left to question what is real and who is the true ‘character’ in this thriller. The murders are shown in a way where you aren’t sure of just who exactly the true killer is. Is the doll a figment of Kat’s imagination or the other way around?”
