Review: Kim Petras spooks up a good time with Halloween mixtape, ‘Turn Off the Light, Vol. 1’ -

We’ve all got a curious thirst for the dangerous and the macabre. It’s the relentless, almost malicious, nature of the unknown that worms its way into our spine and sends a shockwave of goosebumps down our skin and adrenaline in our bloodstream. Terror and horror, two psychologically-based concepts, are at the core of these intangible chills and thrills. “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse,” scholar of English gothic tales and vampire lore pundit Devendra P. Varma once wrote in his 1957 book, Gothic Flame: Being a History of the Gothic Novel in England.

Popular culture has been riddled with such trickery for centuries, from the works of Gothic and horror literature to the dazzle of the silver screen to various sub-genres of music, including horror-punk, horror-core and shock-rock. The baseline is always our most primal of fears ⏤ clenching onto depravity only the human mind can conjure and inflicting wide-spread panic and dread of the witching hour and feverish night sweats. Pop enchantress Kim Petras digs up similarly decayed relics of the spookiest night of the year ⏤ All Hallow’s Eve, of course ⏤ for her new mixtape, Turn Off the Light, Vol. 1. Interludes like “o m e n” and “TRANSylvania” whet the appetite for a night of ghoulishness, swerving away from her usual bubblegum pop effervescence and leveling up on wicked good fun.

The beastly “Close Your Eyes” is a terrifying mix of club-pop and icy darkness. “Go on and say, say your last words / Sometimes the best things kinda hurt / ‘Cause this is real, it’s unrehearsed / My final touch, your fatal curse,” she sings, lips puckering at her own playful naughtiness. The percussion thuds and swells just like a heartbeat, permitting the listener’s own to ebb and flow, ghastly and outrageous. A clock tower ringing and an unruly thunderstorm breaking over head, “Tell Me It’s a Nightmare” soaks with demonic yearning, and Petras sinks her fangs even deeper into the porcelain-skinned neck of a lover. “Be careful when you love me / I’m only out for blood,” she hisses into the abyss. “You know I’d be the end of you / But you always wanted more.”

On “i don’t wanna die…,” predominantly an instrumental, Petras drives the nails further into her resolve to really and fully live a life worth living. The beat is swollen, writhing around in its own skeletal remains and proving to be a satisfying set-up for “In the Next Life,” on which Petras learns to embrace her bloodlust. “I’m the greatest God created / I’m a sickness, I’m contagious / I’m a demon, power trippin’,” she spits, drawing upon Freddie Mercury influence and decorating the piano chords with bat-like bite.

It’s just all very seductive, particularly in how she calls upon the magnificence of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who delivers an altogether stimulating incantation on the titular cut. “Only in the darkness will you find your true self / Howl at the moon to awaken the spell / One cannot judge what the eye cannot see,” speaks Elvira into puffs of caldron bubbles and the silvering harvest moon. “Outside the realm of humanity / Embrace your fear, don’t dare to run / Only then will you be what you’re meant to become…”

Petras’ Turn Off the Light, Vol. 1, which she co-wrote with Jesse St. John (Britney Spears, Lauv, Camila Cabello) and Sarah Hudson (Dua Lipa, Charli XCX), is in its totality a vengeful and daring collection. It culls the most sinister of life forces, which reach their apex tomorrow on Halloween when the clock strikes midnight. Prepare for Petras to unleash complete havoc all across the land ⏤ and when the veil between the living and dead lifts, we may not survive her diabolical clutches.