There are days when being inside a human body feels less like inhabiting oneself and more like operating a faulty meat suit with questionable instructions. My own experience with neurodivergent burnout didn’t necessarily cause existential dread, but moving through it certainly made me more aware of how unreliable the relationship between the mind and body can be. Erotic Secrets of Pompeii seem to understand that particular absurdity with their latest single, “Body Horrific”.
The song takes the simple fact of having a body and makes it wonderfully strange. There is something oddly soothing about the drum and bass. They create a steady pulse underneath the song while the occasional cowbell adds a touch of whimsy to what could otherwise become an exercise in existential discomfort. Instead, Erotic Secrets of Pompeii makes the whole song feel almost playful, as though they are inviting one to sit down and consider the ridiculousness of being human.
Then comes the declaration: “your body is not your body”.
It doesn’t sound like a question but more of an observation. It’s an observation that is delivered with certainty. It’s the pointing out of something that should have been obvious all along. The body is supposed to be ours, but it aches without permission, fails without warning, changes without consent, and even behaves in ways the mind cannot simply understand.
The characters wandering through the verses are extensions of that idea. The playboy, the cowboys, and the wax dame aren’t simply strange characters dropped into an already peculiar song, but each represents another way the body can become a limitation, something that changes, decays, betrays, or ultimately refuses to behave according to the expectations placed upon it. Their bodies become prisons, evidence, and eventually their own kind of tomb.
There is something clever about the fact that the music never treats this as purely horrifying. The rhythm moves with comfortable familiarity while the lyrics gradually dismantle the assumption that one can trust the thing carrying them through the world. The mind and body are both unreliable narrators. Neither is capable of convincing the other that it is in control. The mind creates rules the body doesn’t understand. The body imposes limits the mind refuses to accept and somewhere in between the two sits the person trying to make sense of it.
That tension gives “Body Horrific” its strange charm. Erotic Secrets of Pompeii aren’t asking one to escape the body or romanticise its imperfections. They are staring directly at the ridiculousness of being trapped inside something that is both intimate and unknowable. Their humour makes the idea easier to swallow, but doesn’t remove the discomforting truth either.
Perhaps the real horror of the human condition is not that the body is flawed, but that we are expected to trust it anyway. We wake up inside it every morning, strap ourselves into the meat suit, and carry on as though we were ever given a manual.
We weren’t, but listening to “Body Horrific” could be a small guide to understanding it.
Catch Erotic Secrets of Pompeii on Tour
- 17-SEPT – The Ferret – Preston
- 18-SEPT – Amped – Huddersfield
- 19-SEPT – Riff Factory – Stoke-on-Trent
- 20-SEPT – Dead Wax – Norwich
- 24-SEPT – Bunkhouse – Swansea
- 25-SEPT – Soundhouse – Leicester
- 26-SEPT – Craufurd Arms – Milton Keynes
- 27-SEPT – The Railway Inn – Winchester
- 27-NOV – File 7 – Magny-le-Hongre, France
