Since their debut in 2025, Johannesburg post-punk trio Pussy Heaven have been world-building. It’s a world that intensifies with each of the band’s releases, challenging listeners to prioritise self-expression and to closely interrogate society. Their debut EP, HYMN, is the first taste of what this world looks like fully realised.
Playing like a carefully orchestrated film score, HYMN extends and evolves the gothic post-punk sound established across the band’s first three singles toward cinematic new heights. “Milkshake” opens the EP, setting the tone for the journey ahead. It’s gritty sound is carried by a mantra: “Say it with me. Pray it with me. We could be dead tomorrow.” Described by the band as “a deathly meditation,” the track is a moody call to embrace being alive and to live. While still steeped in darkness, there’s dreamy atmosphere that lurks beneath the surface of “Milkshake.”
This atmosphere deepens on “Alfie,” an ethereal shoegazey track that feels like a dream state in pursuit of peace. In a world of chaos, “Alfie” longs for a moment of quiet where, maybe, just maybe, faith can still be found. As the band explains, “The song expresses a feeling of helplessness in the wake of the world around us, being continuously plunged into chaos while becoming desensitised to violence.” Alongside that frustration comes a more vulnerable admission: “All I want is a love supreme.” It’s a simple but affecting expression of the desire for a more fulfilling and healthier world.
HYMN sees the band engage with the world around them with a sense of softness that they haven’t had before. Rather than the overt anger that underscores their first singles, HYMN’s defining mood is what the band describes as “defeatism.” Yet this defeatism exists alongside hope, the EP’s transitional nature becoming the soundtrack to finding your footing amid life’s turmoil.
“GIZMO” closes HYMN with a quiet acknowledgement of the persistence required to live in a world of unrelenting chaos. As the band puts it, the EP “was written as a prayer and a type of therapy,” a way of releasing the weight of the world while reminding themselves that life is fleeting.
As the lyrics of “Alfie” suggest, the structure and movement of HYMN are akin to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Both records are prayers — mantras to help navigate life’s challenges. While one celebrates survival, the other embraces death as part of the pursuit for something bigger. Musically, both projects explore new territories of creation.
HYMN touches on grief, the search for peace and an embrace of life- and marks a maturation of the world Pussy Heaven. The catharsis running through the EP signals both an ending and a beginning: one chapter closes in reflection, making way for a clearer understanding of what life can become when peace is finally pursued.
With HYMN, Pussy Heaven has shifted the goalpost. They sound unlike anything else in South Africa right now. Pussy Heaven’s sound continues to defy genre and invites audiences to challenge what they understand about goth rock and post rock. HYMN alone is a testament to what’s possible when you colour outside the litterbox.
