WEEKEND MARTYR – CRUEL HOUSE – CS

Track Listing

1. CRUEL HOUSE
2. MOONGROUND
3. NO SUN
4. LEE
5. DROWN SUN
6. SCISSORS
7. LIVER
8. BURN
9. EDGE
10. NO LOVE
11. SEA SEED
12. LOOK UP

Notes

“CRUEL HOUSE” is a nocturnal and visceral journey, a path that moves through cruel houses, burning suns, and milky moons, never seeking true redemption. The lyrics function as fragments of consciousness: brief, repetitive, obsessive—closer to disturbed mantras than to linear narratives. It is a kind of writing that does not explain, but insists.
From the very beginning, a sense of emotional and mental dependence emerges, a voice clinging to a “little helper,” to a secret weapon that makes the mind “blow up.” The recurring invitation to “look up and be yourself” sounds more like an order than a hope, an attempt to stay upright in a “place to live” that always feels temporary.
Tracks like Moonground and Sea Weed expand the space, turning it into a dreamlike landscape of creamy fog, sea, storms, and seeds thrown into the cold. Here, escape (“flew away”) is the only possible response, but it brings no salvation: it is merely drifting, remaining suspended without a tongue—or with two tongues—unable to truly say anything.
The most disturbing core of the album, however, beats within domestic images: Cruel House reduces the home to a place of physical and mental decay, a space that falls apart along with those who inhabit it. There is no nostalgia, only repetition and anger, as if naming cruelty were the only way to make it real.
The sun, instead of illuminating, blinds and consumes. In No Sun and Drown Sun it becomes an ambiguous object of worship, something to be adored rather than understood. Light does not save: it crushes, isolates, and prevents dialogue. “I can’t talk to anyone” becomes a poetic statement, not just a confession.
With Liver, Scissors, and Edge, the album enters a more physical, self-destructive dimension: inner demons, changing bodies, hands to be cut, thoughts to be killed. Here violence is not spectacle, but expressive necessity—a way to empty the mind and shout “at the edge of the world.”
The ending, between Burn and No Love, offers no consolation. Burning together, with no birds in flight, and accepting “no love” as an extreme condition become definitive acts. Love is not a solution, but an absence that can even teach how to die or how to rise again.
“CRUEL HOUSE” album is thus a compact and coherent work in its darkness: a sonic and lyrical ritual that does not seek to please, but to linger on the skin. An album that does not ask to be understood, but to be crossed through, until one finds oneself—if all goes well—a little more tired, a little emptier, and perhaps more real.

released February 13, 2026

Album credits

Album produced and mixed by Marco Fasolo
Master by Jean Charles Carbone
Magico Studio, Italy.

All songs are written by Riccardo Prianti, music by WEEKEND MARTYR.
Recorded in live take (and some overdubs) in analog on a 4 tracks,
April 2025 in 5 days

WEEKEND MARTYR are:

Riccardo Prianti: lyrics, vox, all guitars, mandolin, banjo, synth,organ
Elia Lazzerini: drums, vibraphone, all kind of percussion and second vox
Matteo Scateni: bass, acoustic bass, organ, some guitars and third vox

Cruel Records – Almost Halloween Time Records – Ciqala Records
Artwork by Luigi Falagario