London-based Assyrian-Armenian artist CARRIE ABYSS (the project of Bernadette Lara) releases her new concept EP, Hey, Sinner, a visceral exploration of sin, sacrifice, and survival set against a backdrop of ancient myth and modern rage. Blending alt-pop, industrial, and electronic textures with haunting choral layers, the record unites theology and rebellion in a world where the divine is cruel and the damned fight to be heard.
The EP’s focus track, “Father, Forgive Me”, captures that defiance in its purest form, a reclamation of voice, identity, and authorship.
“Father, Forgive Me is the moment when you have no choice but to find salvation in the forbidden,” says Carrie Abyss.
The song was born from a deeply personal act of reclamation. While living in Turkey, Lara created a remix for one of the country’s most celebrated rock artists who later borrowed her arrangement concept without credit. Rather than confront him, she reclaimed what was hers: her voice.
“I stripped everything away and kept only my voice, the sound that was truly mine, and built a new song around it. That song became Father, Forgive Me.”
That voice, layered, spectral, and unflinching, forms the core of Hey, Sinner, which unfolds as a dark, allegorical narrative rooted in Assyrian mythology and religious storytelling. Across four chapters, the EP tells the story of a young woman condemned for her sins and forced to navigate divine wrath, spiritual manipulation, and her own awakening.
The opening track, “Hey, Sinner”, begins with the voice of God thundering judgment, an electrifying blend of industrial textures and ritualistic rhythm that sets the tone for the story to come. In “Seraphim”, the girl’s desperate prayers rise to heaven, inspired by the six-winged angels of Hagia Sophia’s ancient mosaics, beings of light incapable of understanding human suffering. “Sacrifice” turns the lens on the mob: a feverish track channeling witch hunts both historical and modern, where the villagers’ blind obedience becomes its own kind of horror. Finally, “Father, Forgive Me” closes the circle, a haunting plea that transforms shame into strength and submission into self-possession.
Drawing on demons, angels, and witches from Assyrian mythology, the Seraphim mosaics of Hagia Sophia, and the patriarchal violence embedded in religious tradition, Hey, Sinner stands as both myth and manifesto. It is a gothic critique of faith and the civilizations that weaponize it to silence women.
Under the moniker CARRIE ABYSS, Lara has built a body of work that fuses emotional catharsis with political urgency. A co-founder of nekolektif, an underground queer collective in Istanbul, she has long been a force within Türkiye’s alternative scene. Her previous releases, including the EP mass destruction, positioned her as one of the region’s most fearless experimental voices, uniting modern metal, alt-pop, and industrial influences into something volatile, vital, and wholly her own.Hey, Sinner is the next step in that evolution. It is an unholy prayer, an exorcism of shame, and a reminder that even in darkness, a woman’s voice can still sound like salvation.
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