Cicatrice is the primary music and art project of Ani Weiss, myself, the current head writer for this blog, and founder of BIRTHDFX. Cicatrice is an industrial music project, veering into sludge metal, noise rock, harsh noise and power electronics. My intent with Cicatrice was for it to be a total outlet for artistic expression, where I would be in control of the sounds, logos, aesthetics, influence and philosophy of the whole thing. Cicatrice represents my abilities in music, graphic art, sound design, publishing, writing, and distributing media in the most coherent way that I can present them.
Sonically, Cicatrice is influenced primarily by bands like Godflesh, Cromlech, Swans, Big Black, Sutcliffe Jugend, Prurient, and Street Sects. There are many more artists to list here, and the list is constantly growing because I feel like I am constantly searching for the next sound to add the stack of the diverse sonic textures that Cicatrice has. I also feel that I am making music that I want to hear and what I think Industrial music should sound like. Industrial music is not about fitting a specific sound or aesthetic, but rather is more an ethos of individuality and punk sensibilities, constantly pushing the envelope for what constitutes as music and what is acceptable as art. The music of Cicatrice is noisy and uncomfortable, at times controversial, and that is what makes it attractive and noticeable among the thousands of other D.I.Y. transfem bands that are all doing the same thing to death.
Thematically, Cicatrice is a project about trauma, specifically trauma of the transgender experience. Lyrical themes touch on dysphoria, body horror, drug use, physical and sexual abuse, death and loss, political and social oppression, and lashing out at abusers and misogynists. "Cicatrice" is a word in French, Spanish, and Italian, which means "scar", and I chose this to represent the physical scars of trauma and oppression and the lasting mental scars that a life of trauma leaves behind. I found it interesting that the word itself comes from Latin and is the same word across multiple modern languages – it kind of represents a 'universal' experience of shared trauma and bonding over that.
I really love harsh noise and power electronics a lot, but an extremely common and tired theme within the genre is glorifying famous serial murderers and describing acts of extreme misogyny to draw a reaction from the audience. I really wanted to flip this on its head, so to speak, by describing the experience of the receiving end of that imbalance of power, while still nodding to works in the genre that I feel personally influenced by. By this I mean, instead of making overtly toxic and masculine music about serial killers and criminals, I show the horror of what it looks like to live in this environment and be a woman. I have attempted to describe what it is like to be socially demoralized and afraid as a female, from the perspective of a transgender woman, one the most widely oppressed and misunderstood demographics in the current age.
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