In about 2017 or somewhere around then, all the little shops by me that are run by like one girl and sell mostly Sears catalog jewelry they picked up at estate sales, a selection of three interchangeable blouses, and tour shirts from the '90s at a 1000% markup also started offering nazar amulets in various guises and trinkets. I don't know why, but other girls who couldn't afford to run stores with a lower daily sales volume than your average yacht broker really seemed to dig it and pushed those purchases per diem up into the double digits. Presumably, the idea was that these concentric blue circles would protect you from the premonitional gaze of a roaming malocchio and help them find a boyfriend who is easily bullied or land a promotion to superintendent at the non-profit orphanage for wayward Victorian dolls they work at, but I actually think there was more to it. Calling yourself a witch became popular around the same time, and rather than warding off evil, I think decorating oneself with these charms was meant to place the world on notice that the forces of evil were at her command, that the maleficence of the world bent to her will. What's a bigger power play than flipping a reverse card on Father Brimstone himself, making life a game of Faustian Uno where the objective is to make the devil your bitch? As a metal fan, I understand this impulse. Metal musicians are adept at adopting the iniquitous and vile to lend power and potency to their sound, whether it be naming themselves after an unholy disease or giving their albums and songs the titles that align with various curses- evil flows through metal like blood through the gasping pumps of the human heart. More to the point of donning a malignant gaze to publicize one's perihic influence is Raleigh, North Carolina's Demon Eye. On their most recent (as of 2017) LP Prophecies and Lies, the group proudly performs a nostalgic and measured homage to Black Sabbath, with flashes of Iron Maiden's guitar heroics and Blue Öyster Cult's playful, psychedelic mysticism. This is very familiar, fuzzy, hooky, and muscular metal that is unavoidably charming in its brash display of unself-conscious depictions of might and wizardly wickedness. Early into this misadventure, the group tiptoes up to the altar of doom-shrouded Hecate before barreling over into Sabbath swagger on "In the Spider's Eye." Their outlandish outlaw nature takes on new dimensions of depravity on the blues bruiser "The Redeemer," and later the mystic, Deep Purple-worshipping "Vagabond" glides on a pungent lilac-tinted cloud as it scrapes the countryside in an endless quest for invigorating brushes with budding chaos. Is the sweep of el mal de ojo the harbinger of great misfortune, or a tiger yet to be tamed? For each of us, the answer is different, a rejoinder whose verdict rests solely in the eye of the beholder.
Souls are like Pokémon cards, the money is in the margins (Soulseller Records).
