Self-Control: Panic Priest and Night Sins at Absolution Fest 2023

Less "what happened" and more "leveling with you"

I wish I’d gotten more of Panic Priest and Night Sins because, to some degree, they were the two most relevant acts, considering the issues I had in my mind—and my mother is not a side-issue to the night I ate dirt.

Something I’ve said before in this series is that….I haven’t always listened to your music when I buy a ticket. Sometimes, I’m just listening to my gut about who I should go see, and sometimes I just need to force myself out of the house.

Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I was exhausted because I was still building up my strength to handle shows like this. I hadn’t attended a festival of any kind in ages, so I think I had a little anxiety about my ability to make it through. But Panic Priest has the kind of vocals my mother would have turned UP in the car.

Panic Priest’s Cover of Self-Control

See, my mother came from a history of abuse that almost nobody I’ve ever known has equalled. It is so bad that it makes my family name notorious in Daytona Beach, my hometown. Ask about the Crews and Saxon lineage, and people lower their voices because… it was awful. AWFUL. I can’t stay mad at the women in my family anymore, based on what they had to overcome.

That’s hard to say considering where I’m coming from, but that’s a whole podcast.

My mother died when I was only 21, and she was 49. She said some things to me when she was in the hospital that got stuck in my mind, and when I catch myself making the same mistakes she made—and it’s usually about men or education—I stop that shit FAST. Not a mystery, right?

But…during his set, Panic Priest’s cover of “Self-Control” reminded me of something that I’d forgotten: my mother’s taste in music. In the context of my trauma work, it was well-timed because the choices I have made in this life that people find to be so unusual are made by watching my family and deciding to do the opposite of everything.

I can remember being in the car with her and she’d perk up when a song played that struck her—and she LOVED Laura Branigan’s song “Self-Control”…but you know what else my mother liked? Depeche Mode—more specifically “Enjoy the Silence.”

You might as well listen to the original, so here you go:

She also just loved topics that leaned more mysterious, so guys, I’m thinking my mother was a lil goth. And you know what? She would have LOVED Panic Priest’s rich vocals and, quite frankly, his understated but sexy stage presence.

I somehow knew that night that, if my mother had survived cancer, she would have wanted to be there because… well, Night Sins interpolates Depeche Mode. So, it was like an interesting one-two punch of my mother’s music taste, as that song and any Depeche Mode songs were ones my mother loved.

The night I ate dirt is an incident of very serious abuse, and I can tell you without blinking that my mother’s background normalized certain kinds of abuse enough to make decisions a challenge for me. My choices since my last relationship ended are allowing me to demonstrate what it looks like when you refuse to keep heading in that direction, to refuse to keep making the same mistakes about your relationships. I don’t have the luxury of continuing to fuck up when I can’t be that kind of example.

October 2023 was a time of fast change and bold moves. I said before that I chose to go to Tennessee less than 2 weeks prior, so I was a little like a deer in headlights—nothing about my life could have possibly been a part of a plan. It’s not that I’d never been to Tennessee before—Val, the owner of Camp Wonder Wander, and I had been friends for many years—but it was only in 1-week sprints and to see just one band.

But in 2023, I’d begun to sift through some of the things about her that should’ve informed me about the more dynamic parts of who she was…is…and her music and politics came to the front. My mother was an outspoken Democrat—often tussling with the more conservative views of the rest of the family acted upon.

My mother would be out here breaking sh*t in these Trump years, I can promise you that. Well, maybe it’s even MORE like me to remember that it was typically hurting some feelings, but I also think my mother was far more liberal than most Boomers in general.

Time Out: Let Me Get Real With You

Setting up a music festival can’t possibly orchestrate this level of trauma work, so I’ll be the first to say that a music festival isn’t typically this deep—but that’s why I’m writing about it. I’m not writing about a music festival to this painful degree because it was good, I’m writing about it because this was my doorway into somewhere else, into the kinds of choices I’d be proud I made without being tied to a romantic partner’s b*llshit.

Considering what you know so far about the night in question and what I’m telling you about my mother, it should make perfect sense to you that seeing a musician who looks so freakishly close to your abusive ex is going to make you start processing—especially if you’re only 1 year out from a residential center you stepped into to handle these issues.

You’re gonna think about who wasn’t there for you.

You’re gonna think about who hit you.

You’re gonna think about running through the night terrified, like you’re just a machine running with a consciousness in tow…just trying to get to safety.

You’re gonna struggle with what your younger self went through while also being mad at yourself for making the wrong choices most of your life.

You’re gonna feel bitter.

You’re gonna have some crazy thoughts.

And you’re gonna think about what normalized that behavior.

Especially if you went back to your abuser after it happened.

Pink your jaw up from the floor, baby. We’re not done. But maybe I just serve you some beeps and boops for a bit… and maybe now you can tell me about the relief you feel when I just hand you beeps and boops, and you feel better.

And you’re gonna learn real quick why I do the things I do, why I refuse to handle toxicity, and why I am as protective as I am: because the good in the world can swallow men like That Guy or be swallowed by the bitter beasts of their natures.

Fuck that. Fuck that entirely. I will choose a lonely road over one where I’m being dragged by my hair, and just remember how the wind on my cheek felt that night as a guide to corrective choices.

I hope this errand makes better sense and that I start to seem a lot less like just some sweet girl who showed up at a music festival with her two very hot friends and strolled into Nashville a week later and shows up on the Internet in a Baphomet onesie.

Let’s say a few nice things about Night Sins before we peace out.

So, maybe it makes more sense to you why I’d just…let you have an intermission through Night Sins here and the next post, which is Light Asylum, and just say…remember these beeps and boops?

I do. Weren’t they so awesome? Do YOU have more photos and videos of Panic Priest and Night Sins from Absolution Fest? Can we get more praise for these guys? Can we get some more witnesses for the beep boop?

We can have more in October 2025 if this anti-hurricane spell works. So…have some Night Sins and relax, but also….go see them. I’m so serious, go see them. A friend of mine popped in to ask if I’d heard them before, and I was like OMG YES. I’d love to see these guys again.

Have a good week, y’all. I’ll have more uplifting things to share soon, I promise, and next week we’re talking just about Light Asylum because I was gobsmacked how good that performance was and how addicted I was to that band for the entirety of my time in Tennessee.