Watch your ears! This “hyperpunk” song, mixing techno, industrial metal, references to witchcraft and lyrics of suffering, really has everything to (dis)please Eurovision 2024.
Eurovision 2024 is already shaping up to be a lively edition. If controversies recur every year about the small geopolitical arrangements of the competition, artistic and aesthetic debates are not left out. Among this year’s candidate songs, one title is already attracting critical controversy and polarizing Eurovision fans. Between the classics, defenders of a standardized variety song with big voices, and the dynamiters, who advocate original, offbeat or even totally crazy performances, the hatchet is unearthed.
The song that stirs up critics this time is an improbable “hyperpop” title that mixes techno, electro-punk and metal. All enriched by imagery drawn from witchcraft and sometimes disturbing social subjects, such as dysmorphophobia or mental suffering. The song, “Doomsday Blue”, performed by Bambie Thug, is billed as an “electro-metallic breakdown”, inspired by the pain of unrequited love. It begins with several explosions similar to those of a storm and difficult to hear incantations from the singer. Several harsh, violent and jerky verses and choruses follow, without a clearly defined melody, between hard core industrial metal and glam rock, never far from music often classified as “gothic”.
The lyrics, when you can understand them, are just as heartbreaking, with the use of “spells”, including the incantation “Avada Kadavra”, derived from Aramaic and popularized by the Harry Potter franchise. Bambie Thug, alias Bambie Ray Robinson, said he is not a fan of JK Rowling because of her views on transgender issues, but appreciates the art of playing with words. Words, there are others, just as joyful: “I speak to destroy / Through twisted tongues, a spell deployed on you / I see the scars in your eyes”…
In the clip unveiled on the official Eurovision website, the song, which will represent Ireland from May 7 to 11 during the final phase of the competition in Sweden, is accompanied by images of the artist, long black hair and dark makeup on a whitish face, manipulating multiple objects with a satanic dimension, in a twilight universe, a disturbing interior, a gloomy bathroom… The camera moves so much that it can make the most hearts feel seasick. sensitive.
Although it received positive reviews during the pre-selection competition in its country, “Doomsday Blue” remains, it must be said, a fairly traumatic experience. The song also aroused the anger of conservatives, the far right and part of the church in Ireland, who see it as “woke nonsense” and an attack on traditional Irish culture. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling for his disqualification. Criticisms which, for some, are directly linked to the orientation of Robinson, who presents himself as “non-binary” and has several times testified about his experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in the music industry. To make matters worse, she also says she actually practices witchcraft, in particular the magic of occult seals and signs. Enough to still give you a few chills.