‘The Daughters Of Cain’: What is Ethel Cain saying on ‘Ptolomaea’?
Here lies Ethel Cain. On the artist’s debut album, Hayden Silas Anhedönia, or Ethel Cain, wrote about the life and death of the character who gave her her name. It’s a concept album telling not only the story of that one character, but of a generational curse that she seems doomed to tragedy by. The tale is unveiled song by song, chapter by chapter, but it’s in the pure horror climax of ‘Ptolemaea’ that the true extent of the frightening fate is told.
The album begins with Cain, a preacher’s daughter, navigating the pain of her first heartbreak. As she mourns the loss of her initial love and becomes entangled with a new, dangerous partner, the narrative unfolds into a more expansive story. The opening track, ‘Family Tree (Intro)’, serves as a haunting overture, introducing the theme of generational trauma. Reflecting on the inescapability of genetics, Cain poignantly declares, “Jesus can always reject his father / But he cannot escape his mother’s blood / He’ll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers / But he’ll never escape what he’s made up of.”
The idea of the father and mother and the role of Ethel Cain’s own parents come in time and time again throughout the album. ‘Hard Times’ hints that the character has suffered major abuse at the hands of her Father, the town’s beloved preacher. Later, on ‘Strangers’, she calls out to her mother, singing, “Mama, just know that I love you” as her final message from beyond the grave. But it’s at the moment of Cain’s death that the role of her parents and her blood is understood.
It’s a horrifying track. Beginning with little more than a moaning sound, like a beast breathing as a discordant drum echoed like a frightened heartbeat. At this point in the story, the protagonist has run away and into the arms of Isaiah, a boyfriend who drugs her, traffics her into sex work and, at this moment, attacks and kills her. A scary voice speaks over the track that could be Isaiah’s, her father’s or even the devil’s as the song takes its title from Dante’s Inferno and Ptolemy, the name given to the deepest circle where traitors reside. It’s a double-sided reference, as while Isaiah betrayed Cain’s trust, the Preacher’s Daughter also betrayed her fate, family, and life back in the small town that she was supposed to lead.
It’s only after the blood-curdling scream of “stop” that marks the start of Isiah’s attack that Cain’s treachery is understood. As the music rages in and out, mimicking the blows of his attack, a sermon is read that acts as the final puzzle piece, revealing the character’s cursing fate.
“Blessed be the Daughters of Cain,” it begins, “bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception.” Written by Anhedönia, this Daughters Of Cain sermon is the moment that the entire story of her character hinges on. As the artist has said that she’s working on a novelisation of the tale and has hinted that in the future, she’d like to also explore the lives of Cain’s mother and grandmother, it’s clear that the story behind the album that exists in her mind is a far broader thing. She’s considered the entire family tree, seeing them, as sung of in her song, as a bloodline doomed and unable to escape the curse of their blood. She sees them, as she says, as “bound to suffering,” and throughout the sermon, she peels back the layers of the poison, showing just how deep this curse is.
Through the daughters, “whore mothers”, “children”, and finally “, you”, as the voice speaks directly to Ethel Cain in her moment of death, this haunting moment makes sense of the whole story but inevitably concludes that there is no way around her fate, which is her slaughter.
The ‘Daughters Of Cain’ sermon from ‘Ptolomaea’:
Blessed be the Daughters of Cain, bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception
Blessed be their whore mothers, tired and angry waiting with bated breath in a ferry that will never move again
Blessed be the children, each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence
Blessed be you, girl, promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you
I am no good nor evil, simply I am, and I have come to take what is mine
I was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood
I am here now as you run from me still
Run then, child
You can’t hide from me forever
