I want to taste you on my lips,
Tear you into bits,
I hate you.
I want to get under your skin,
Tear you limb by limb,
I love you...
Tear you into bits,
I hate you.
I want to get under your skin,
Tear you limb by limb,
I love you...
- "Katherine Knight"
SKYND are a gothic industrial electronica band. Their lyrical content is entirely centred around True Crime, focusing on serial killers, cult leaders, or mysterious cases. Since emerging in 2018 with their debut single, "Elisa Lam", the band have quickly gained a rapid following for their experimental blend of Industrial Metal, EDM, Dark Wave, and Goth Rock, their extremely dark music videos, and their unique horror-tinged look.
They are also known for their heavy theatricality, adopting personas straight out of a horror movie to conceal their true identities from the public, and pushing the focus onto the music instead.
They have so far released 3 EP's, Chapter I in 2018, Chapter II in 2019 and Chapter III in 2021.
Current Lineup
- Skynd - vocals
- Father - guitars and instrumentation, programming
SKYND provides examples of:
- Axes at School: The video for "Columbine", which is hardly surprising, given the case it's based on
. Anyone who has school-aged children will likely find it an incredibly difficult watch. - Based on a True Story: Pretty much their entire premise. All of the band's songs are about real, famous figures from True Crime, including serial killers such as Richard Ramirez, Edmund Kemper and John Wayne Gacy, smaller-scale murderers like Gary Heidnik, Tyler Hadley and Katherine Knight, cult leader Jim Jones, and the Columbine school shooters.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Skynd often appears with these as part of her look.
- Blasphemous Boast: From "Gary Heidnik":God has a sense of humor,Dark shadows of an evil mind,God, He would be amused,To see you at my feet, see you at my feet...note
- Bowdlerise: Both "Gary Heidnik" and "Richard Ramirez" were released with "uncensored" and "censored" videos, the latter versions editing out much of the violence and gore.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite their music and appearance, the band are very sweet to fans, and have made no attempt to hide how much they appreciate all the support they've received in their fledgeling career.
- A Day in the Limelight: "Bianca Devins" breaks their usual formula by being named after the victim of the crime, whereas nearly all of their other songs focus on the killer(s). "Elisa Lam" is almost an example, although given the mysterious circumstances (there's no real evidence that an outside party was involved in her death), they really couldn't play that one any other way.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The masculine vocal effect that Skynd uses frequently, often when singing from the perspective of a specific murderous individual in the song.
- The Faceless: Father only ever appears in public with his leather gimp mask. Skynd counts as well, as she only ever appears in her elaborate makeup.
- Genre-Busting: Their music jumps between Industrial Metal, EDM, Dark Wave, Goth Rock, Synth-Pop, elements of Dubstep, orchestral... about the only thing that all of their songs have in common is that they're all creepy as hell.
- I Am the Band: Skynd the singer, vocalist of SKYND the band. The music videos and much of the band's press tend to put her front and center as well.
- Larynx Dissonance: One of the vocal effects that Skynd frequently uses involves pitching her voice down to make it sound more masculine.
- In fact, the heavy use of vocal effects and modulation has become so ubiquitous in their music that hearing Skynd use her natural voice in a song can produce this effect.
- No Name Given: Neither band member has revealed their real name to the public; Skynd is Skynd, and Father is Father. There has been much speculation as to Skynd's identity, and the internet has produced possible candidates, but absolutely nothing has been confirmed.
- Scatting: The pre-chorus to "Columbine", which is designed to sound like a machine gun going off.
- The Oner: The video for "Columbine" is edited to appear as this.
- Shown Their Work: Being a massive True Crime fanatic, Skynd always puts in a ton of research into the subjects of their songs, which is largely reflected by the attention to detail shown in their videos.
- Special Guest: Korn frontman Jonathan Davis appears on "Gary Heidnik", and rapper Bill $aber appears on "Columbine".
