“I find beauty in the obscene. I don’t think it’s horrible.” Mimi Barks has just shown Kerrang! the images for the inner sleeve of her new album. A collection of close-ups of mouths, blood, various medical-looking stuff and giblet‑y bits that probably feel sharp pain under the slightest of pressure, it’s the sort of thing Instagram wouldn’t like. Eager to hear our opinion, and grinning expectantly in her usual Devil’s‑jester way, we reply that we approve. It is, we say, fantastically grotesque. Horrible, we tell her. “It’s not horrible,” she says again. “I think it’s beautiful. It resembles the music. It’s 100 per cent me.” The album of which she speaks is THIS IS DOOM TRAP, the definitively-titled debut full-length from the London-based German ghoul. Where 2022’s...
