There’s a sentence buried in the track commentary for Ewwwphoria that could double as the thesis for the whole record: “the necessary violence it will take to stop it.” Death Spa‘s debut is not a healing record, unless your definition of healing includes rupture, brutal cycles, and the fluorescent rituals of escape from a burning world. It’s a purging, a splintering scream from someone who has found themselves by peeling away skin.
Self-released in March 2025 and constructed on the back of Mia-Rose Malone’s deeply personal, often surreal lyrical vision, Ewwwphoria mutates prog, hardcore, horror-score synths, and B-movie psychedelia into a clenched-fist confession.
It’s a record built like a weapon—structured chaos held together by tight compositional control and twisted humor. That’s not accidental. Death Spa’s method is obsessive: drums first, then guitar, then bass, lyrics last. What sounds like volatility is rigorously orchestrated.
Malone’s journey from Pink Muscles to Death Spa maps a transformation, not only musically—where the palette widened, the riffs got sharper, and the rhythm section (now with Levi Fuller and Jonathan Rodriguez) became a living beast—but also physically and psychologically. Tracks like “Cracked Eggs” and “Body Horror” drag you into the grotesque miracles of transition, not just as a body process but as revenge against misdiagnosis, against misgendering, against erasure.
Influenced as much by Botch and Daughters as by Ween, Goblin, and David Lynch’s pandemic-era weather reports, the album mixes uncanny mundanity with flesh-ripping spectacle. When Malone screams about alien parasites, infinite pregnancy loops, or harvesting materials from corpses to kill every man alive, it’s not just horror fiction. It’s autobiography through the lens of genre distortion. The body becomes site and weapon; gender, trauma, and power mutate into narrative extremes because nothing else hits hard enough.
It’s fitting that the record features guest spots from saxophonist Skerik and cellist Lori Goldston. Death Spa is not interested in genre purity. It’s about atmosphere, collision, and using every available sound to conjure a haunted funhouse of dysphoria and defiance. Colin Marston’s mixing gives it the density and precision of a scalpel dragged across a dream sequence.
The band’s Pacific Northwest context matters. Death Spa exists in the same weird fog as Twin Peaks and the rain-slick legacy of underground Seattle punk. But they’re also not alone now—sharing bills with Deaf Club, Hirs Collective, Nurser, and Rainbow Coalition Death Cult, they’re part of a sharpened, aggressive new queer noise movement that doesn’t ask to be understood before it kicks your teeth in.
Still, Ewwwphoria resists any cohesive narrative. Malone’s refusal to give the album a single message isn’t a deflection—it’s a challenge. The tracklist moves between gut-wrenching realism (“Escape From Kirkland”) and fever-dream absurdism (“The Cyst,” “Pregnant Time Slave”) with equal sincerity.
“It’s mostly about the weirdness of being trans, my rage toward patriarchy and the violence necessary for real change, female empowerment, and my abuser.”
If you want details, you’ll find them below—each track annotated with precision.
Make it Hurt – This song is very plainly about our government’s dehumanization and erasure of trans people via legislation and the necessary violence it will take to stop it.
Drill the Corpse Lobe – Drill is about the time I adopted a daughter from another dimension. She taught me how to drill into corpses to harvest materials that will kill every man on the planet and pave the way for a peaceful future entirely run by women.
Cracked Eggs – In 2017, I developed a chronic nausea and vomiting condition that nearly killed me. I saw one of the best gastro doctors in the city and went through every test she could think of before she gave up and diagnosed me with stress. I was eventually prescribed meds that lessened the severity of my condition enough that I wouldn’t die, but I was still in miserable pain for five years. In 2022, I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and I began hormone treatment. After a month on estrogen and t-blockers, my illness completely went away.
Pink Castles – When I was a little girl, I would regularly dissociate to another place to escape the abuse from my parents and the gender dysphoria I was experiencing.
Body Horror – Body Horror is about the changes to my body that hormone treatment brought on, the body hair that suddenly made me want to die, and the long, painful process of getting rid of it.
Blue Skies and Golden Sunshine All Along the Way – David Lynch did weather reports throughout the pandemic, and they brought me great comfort. One of his most common phrases when describing the weather was: “Blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way” and this song is my tribute to him.
Seven Faces – Seven Faces is about my fear and distrust of men. I’ve always been paranoid about being followed and attacked when I’m walking outside alone, and it’s gotten so much worse since coming out.
Pregnant Time Slave – This is about when I was stuck in an unbreakable, infinite time loop of giving birth to a pregnant, adult version of myself only to immediately die from the trauma on repeat forever and ever.
The Cyst – One night, I was walking home drunk from a bar when I found a bag of unidentified drugs that I snorted without identification or hesitation. The drugs turned out to be parasitic aliens that took over and used my body to conquer our planet.
Escape From Kirkland – This is an incredibly painful song about my relationship with my abuser and our final day together.
