It has been a pretty wild year for The Pretty Wild. In the last 12 months, the nu-metalcore sister duo of Jyl and Jules Wylde have signed with Sumerian Records, released a number of singles that have gone viral and have all surpassed one million streams on Spotify, and this past Friday, they released their debut album, zero.point.genesis.
The Pretty Wild has become known for their iconic breakdowns and their ability to seamlessly transition from delicate vocals to impressive screams to fast-talking raps. The lyrics of their songs are incredibly detailed and intelligently crafted, mainly based around spiritual elements with a chilling ambiance. Their 2024 song “sLeepwaLkeR” gained notoriety this year for its high energy and the bridge that inspired many TikTok transitions with the lyrics “Silent when I’m choking on the dirt // Reaper fear me” and captured the #22 spot on Billboard’s Hard Rock Songs in April. Earlier this year, The Pretty Wild was also featured on post-hardcore band Deadlands’ song “Kundalini,” which reached its own levels of fame within both bands’ genres and earned Jyl and Jules even more new fans in time for their first full-length album.
Zero.point.genesis is a tale of overcoming darkness and defeating your demons to experience a rebirth. Throughout the album, the sisters dig themselves out of an altered state caused by a pattern of past toxicity. Their spirituality guides their lyricism, with each song building upon the story of the last. The album opens with the previous single, “PARADOX,” which starts off with the yells of “Tear off my skin, rip it off,” before questioning life’s paradoxes, such as “In death, we live, through life we die,” “In the chaos I find peace on emptiness I feed,” and “Hate what I love and I love what I hate.”
“PARADOX” then leads into the title track of the album, which introduces elegant strings as they fight to escape the metaphorical void to rebuild their lives at the zero point. The next song is another previous single, named “living ded,” where the strings make another appearance alongside a heavy intro. It tells “the prophecy of the living dead” and the revelation of fake empathy disguised by a mask. After “living ded” comes “button eyes,” with a concept inspired by the 2009 film Coraline. In the movie, the main character, Coraline, wishes for a more “perfect” life with attentive parents. She then finds a door in her bedroom to the Other World, where her parents have been replaced with seemingly perfect Other Mother and Other Father, who have button eyes and try to stitch some on Coraline before she escapes back into her world. In the song, Jyl and Jules compare how they feel like a doll who is meant to comply and act perfect and how they’ve had enough, choosing to remove their button eyes and dramatically “cut out the parasite” in the bridge breakdown.
“Priestess” is another intriguing song that has an intense sound right from the start. In the first line, they mention the parasite from “button eyes” and the torture they suffered at its hands, detailed in vivid imagery. “OMENS” shows them regaining power over the parasite while they sing, “You drown in the nothingness as I transcend,” and how there’s only dead ends and no escapes.
“The Trial” appears to reference the Salem Witch Trials in the late 1600s, with mentions of “being burned at the stake” and having “atoned for a past I was forced to confess.” The beginning is ominous and evolves into a powerful anthem, with the sisters blasting people who “condemn the ones [they] don’t understand” and for “hiding behind false prophecies.” The eighth song on the album, “hALf aLiVE,” delves into the emotional toll that dealing with a parasite can have. The style of the song is reminiscent of a Y2K emo song, with a string of imaginative lyrics in the chorus, like “Bleeding velvet petals and butterflies.”
The next song, “AFTERLIFE,” is a special collaboration with Magnolia Park, jumpstarted by frontman Joshua Roberts yelling the track’s title. “AFTERLIFE” is a brilliant combination of both groups’ sounds and is about two people who vow to find each other after death, despite how much they clash. In “INFRARED,” Jyl and Jules sing about how difficult it is to get away from the darkness and how it almost wins, while describing themselves as an “entropy addict.” To try to fight the darkness, they say the words “om tare tuttare ture soha,” which is a Tibetan mantra used to encourage healing and protection. The last song on the album (and my personal favorite) is “persephone,” an ode to the Greek Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld, a balancer of light, darkness, and rebirth. It has a more stripped-back sound than the rest of the album and has them reflecting on their journey to reclaim their light. They “built [their] throne where darkness wept” and “learned to bloom where sun neglects,” finally vanquishing the darkness and heading to their “eternal homecoming.”
The Pretty Wild is staying busy after the release of their album, and is maintaining their ever-growing presence on social media. Whether it’s Jyl’s insane stunts in the gym or promoting their partnership with clothing brand MoshDolls, the band makes it a point to keep their fans at the forefront of their minds and often reposts videos made to their songs or art inspired by their lyrics. Besides social media, The Pretty Wild is also racking up festival appearances, with performances at Inkcarceration this past July and upcoming performances at Sonic Temple, Vainstream, Download, and a spot on ShipRocked Cruise next year. They also recently finished a tour with In This Moment and will be supporting Sleep Theory on their European tour in February.
