The very productive Batavia have recently released their second album, Mythos, off which comes the industrial goth force of Mercy's Burning Heart, a piece on par with the Florida duo's storytelling flair, and their entire album's tendency to explore myths and folklore stories.
Mercy's Burning Heart narrates the story the vampire incident of Exeter which is considered to be part of the wider New England vampire panic. In 1892, Mercy Brown, died from tuberculosis or "consumption" which was what peopled called the disease at the time. Her mother Mary and sister Mary Olive had also died from the same illness, and as contemporary folklore connected multiple deaths in one family to undead activity, people believed that one of them was a vampire. The family's patriarch, George Brown, gave permission to exhume the bodies, and while Mary and Mary Olive had the expected level of decomposition, Mercy showed almost no decomposition, and still had blood in the heart. The girl was assumed to be the vampire who caused the illness of her family members, and her heart was removed and then burned.
Once more Batavia mix industrial rock with EBM and strong gothic stylization to a winning outcome which preserves its grit and avoids to sound overstuffed and overly refined. The song is paired to a very creative video, filmed and edited at their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, by the band's own Terri and Ed Cripps, with additional photography by Jeremy Craig.
Mercy's Burning Heart has also been featured on Putting the Stars Right, a compilation to benefit The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council in Providence RI.
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