The mind that feeds despair
A lust that can’t compare
A fate per chance to dare
There is a long line of occult cinema and ritual electronics where desire is treated as a force, not a decoration. Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising fused leather, pop iconography, biker myth, death-drive glamour, and coded queer voltage into a film that turns the body into a site of worship and danger. Coil, in their own work, pursued sound as spellcraft: erotic, esoteric, psychological, and physical, with the voice and machine opening onto altered states, forbidden images, and the charged territory between control and surrender. Chicago-based dark synth and industrial artist TATV GRAL (pronounced ˈtätü ˈgräl) explores similar intense themes in their latest single, “Treachery.” The video features Saturn and Mars amidst visuals of bondage, geometry, divination, cutting, and restraint.
Thematically, “Treachery” began with a chance encounter that sent TATV GRAL’s Allen Addington deeper into the symbolic world of Hellenistic astrology, where Saturn and Mars each carry ancient associations with betrayal. Addington explains:
“It was a discovery in the ancient texts that unlocked the whole song – both Saturn and Mars independently carry the signification of ‘Treachery’, translated directly from the Ancient Greek. Two malefic forces, each already marked by betrayal, meeting in the same charged space.
Following Richard Tarnas and James Hillman, I wanted to explore that archetypal collision phenomenologically – the Old Man and the Young Man, bondage and erotic force – seen through a gay male gaze and the cinematic shadow world of William Friedkin’s Cruising.”
That collision is central to the song’s pressure. Saturn appears as weight, containment, age, structure, and bondage; Mars arrives as heat, erotic charge, separation, and the blade. Addington approaches those forces through the archetypal psychology of James Hillman, treating images from the psyche as charged material to be held, studied, and given form. In that sense, “Treachery” sits near the darker occult-electronic lineage of Coil, the astrologically timed film work of Kenneth Anger, and Jungian shadow work, while remaining rooted in Addington’s own queer visual and sonic language.
Musically, “Treachery” begins in a state of cold electrical intimacy: bubbles, blips, and bit-tune synth tones moving like a private signal through a locked room. The vocal arrives hushed and close to the skin, almost whispered, carrying a lyric of restraint, appetite, despair, and transgression. About a minute in, sighing pads and a more danceable drum pattern push the track upward, letting the voice rise like smoke before the song slips back into its darker, more minimal architecture. Here, TATV GRAL draws from the colder edges of industrial, EBM, and dark electronic music, where mechanical rhythms, claustrophobic textures, and cinematic tension meet an exposed vocal presence. The track’s midpoint lets the voice echo and fade, giving way to a deep synth tone and icy sequencing before the chorus returns. The result is austere but charged, with the song shifting between stark minimal synth and body-driven industrial electronics.
The song’s lyrics circle obsession and restraint, repeating the title like an accusation and a summons. Phrases such as “the mind that feeds despair,” “a lust that can’t compare,” and “your body ensnare” place desire inside a structure of containment, where attraction, danger, and transgression are locked together. The song is not interested in moral distance; it studies the charge itself, and the damage that comes when opposing forces meet in the same room.
For the video, Addington built the visual world by hand before taking it into the digital realm. The piece uses handmade panels, geometric systems, chance operations, bondage imagery, frame-by-frame glitch work, and track mattes to turn Saturn and Mars into a moving visual argument. Addington describes the process in full:
“The video began with paint and artist’s tape on paper – a series of hand-made images of two figures, one in suspension, one abstracted into constructivist geometry. I’d been using these panels as animation for live performances for years. Everything in this video was made by hand before it was ever digital. I shot it myself on an iPhone, set up the lighting, learned bondage rigging for the shoot, and edited every visual glitch by hand, frame by frame, placing each one against specific notes in the track. In an era when AI-generated imagery is everywhere, every frame of this video traces back to a physical act – paint on paper, artist’s tape, a razor blade, a five-sided die.
‘Treachery’ is about the encounter between two archetypes – Saturn and Mars. In ancient astrology both planets carry the signification of treachery, but through opposite natures: Saturn as bondage and containment, Mars as erotic force and the cut. The video is built from that tension.
I designed roughly 80 black-and-white geometric compositions exploring what Saturn looks like as pure form – weight, structure, the horizontal and vertical. From those I selected 16 using an I Ching-derived algorithm, letting chance function as divination. Those panels were scanned and arranged to the bassline of the track – Saturn’s geometry moving to Saturn’s pulse.
For the chorus, I needed Mars. Mars traditionally means to cut and to separate. I printed the Saturn compositions and used a razor to make random cuts, with the number of cuts determined by throwing a five-sided die – five being the Qabbalistic number of Gevurah, the sphere of Mars. The cut panels were collaged back together on the diagonal, compositionally active where Saturn had been still.
Both sets of panels became track mattes – windows letting multiple video streams show through simultaneously. The verses move through Saturnian imagery: architecture, age, stillness. The choruses open onto suspension footage, shot under red light, the body held in restraint and in desire at the same time.
The fragmented frames aren’t a stylistic choice – they’re the struggle itself. Saturn says hold. Mars says cut. The image can’t resolve because the forces won’t.”
That handmade construction gives the video its force. Black-and-white geometric panels act as strict Saturnian architecture, while cut and reassembled compositions introduce Mars as rupture. The bassline moves through these panels like a pulse trapped inside a grid. When the chorus arrives, the red-lit suspension footage opens the piece into the body: restrained, charged, and held between desire and control. The fragmented frames become the visual form of the song’s conflict, with containment and cutting locked in a cycle neither can resolve.
Watch the video for “Treachery” below:
Produced by William Faith at 13 Studio Chicago, “Treachery” is the title track from a four-track EP due July 6, 2026. The release pairs the original single with exclusive remixes by DSTR (Daniel Myer of Haujobb), Tweaker (Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails), and Chicago underground artists [melter].
Listen to “Treachery” below, and pre-order the EP here.
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The post Between Saturn and Mars — Dark Synth Artist Tatv Gral Conjures Eroticism and Malefic Betrayal in Video for “Treachery” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
