“Death of Me” by Pvris, Monday, October 4, 2021

A group of friends from Lowell, Massachusetts, formed the metalcore band Operation Guillotine while they were in high school. With the addition of singer Lyndsey Gunnulfsen, stage name Lynn Gunn, the group grew into Paris, later Pvris--spelling changed for copyright purposes. The band's first EP was described as post hardcore. But by the time the band released their first album, they had begun to incorporate pop elements including electronics. In 2019 the band worked with Paper Route's JT Daly to produce their EP Hallucinations, their major label debut on Warner/Reprise Records. The band incorporated more elements of EDM into their sound. Three songs from Hallucinations made it onto the band's third studio album, Use Me. Two days prior to the release of the album, the two remaining members of Pvris ousted their guitarist for sexual misconduct allegations. With only Gunn and bassist Brian Macdonald left in the group, Pvris seems like a pop group that incorporates rock elements, rather than the other way around. Gunn works her vocals seamlessly between the electronic rhythms on Use Me in a genre bending feat.

ONE MAN'S HELL IS ANOTHER'S GOD. Lynn Gunn grew up fascinated with the occult, graveyards and all things macabre, which make their way into the band's music, which makes sense growing up in the Puritan state of Massachusetts, which boasts plenty of haunted places as well as the state where the mass hysteria about witches took place. The video for "Death of Me" taps into the macabre. A snake wraps itself around Gunn's barely clad body. Gunn also uses serpentine imagery in the opening track of Use Me, "Gimme a Minute," which features the lyrics: "Just cut off the head of a snake / Wanted venom, got a taste." Gunn doesn't shy away from writing about religion. On the band's first album, she wrote the song "Holy" in response to her friend's mother's reaction to when Gunn came out as gay. According to an interview Gunn gave with Shane Told of Lead Singer Syndrome, the song has further reaching implications in a Trump-driven Evangelical America. When Gunn declares in "Holy," "Simply calling out sins don't bring you closer to God," she is declaring for this generation that witch-burning still has no place in our society. But fast forward to 2019's "Death of Me," and we see the singer is still trying to justify her love.

IF IT GETS INTO THE WRONG HANDS...In "Death of Me," Gunn acknowledges that love can be dangerous. This song marks the third song in a row of provocative songs or videos. In “Bad Habits,” Sheeran regrets how the party lifestyle may be destroying him, though autobiographically, he succeeded in breaking free of it. In “Take My Breath,” The Weeknd examines the connections between kink, love, and death. Today’s song seems nonetheless toxic. “This love looks like a loaded gun” verse one begins. Gunn makes several more comparisons “a noose,” “sweet poison,” “a cold-blooded killer,” all of which aren’t the warm fuzzies of a sonnet. There’s certainly a precedent for rock stars with the taste for wilder, less-Leave It to Beaver relationships, Gunn said that this song is “about the risk you take when you are connecting with somebody and putting it all out there.” If you take the lyrics as just metaphor, even the most vanilla of relationships have their risks. There’s no guarantee that falling in love with Bob in accounting won’t shield you from the fact that he’s got a dark secret. Certainly snakes crawling over your body, a group of hands touching you, or playing the knife game is certainly more a brighter red flag than dating Bob. Some of us will always gravitate to the riskier. But whether we travel by motorcycle, car, or plane, every means of transportation has the potential to kill us. After weighing the odds, Gunn realizes that we’re never safe going all in. But that’s when things get interesting.

Read the lyrics on Genius.

Live performance: