THE RETICENT, the emotionally charged progressive metal project led by Grammy‑nominated music educator and multi‑instrumentalist Chris Hathcock, has released the official video for “The Bed of Wasps (Those Consumed with Panic)”, one of the most visceral and punishing tracks from the band’s latest album, please, out now on Generation Prog Records.
“The Bed of Wasps” is the album’s most aggressive and technically demanding moment, a sonic embodiment of panic disorder. Written immediately after Hathcock suffered a real panic attack, the track’s jagged rhythms, dissonant harmonies, and relentless shifts in meter are designed to keep the listener off balance, mirroring the terror and disorientation of the condition itself.
Lyrically, the song is constructed from real statements made by panic‑disorder patients, culminating in the desperate refrain “please stop”, a plea familiar to anyone who has lived through such episodes.
The video amplifies this intensity, plunging viewers into a claustrophobic, escalating psychological spiral. True to THE RETICENT’s reputation for emotionally devastating performance art, the visuals aim not merely to depict panic, but to induce its sensation.
THE RETICENT’s new album please is a concept record chronicling the many battlefields of mental illness, insomnia, concealment, panic, depression, dismissal, and the brink of suicide. Hathcock’s writing is deeply autobiographical, each track drawn from lived experience and crafted to immerse listeners in the emotional reality of these struggles.
The album was written in just six months. Drums were recorded in one day, all other instruments in two, but vocals took two weeks, leaving Hathcock with a vocal injury that required six weeks of silence. This is the first RETICENT album, almost entirely engineered by Hathcock himself at Silent Muse Studio. Drums were tracked by Jamie King (BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, THE CONTORTIONIST) at The Basement Studios, who also mixed and mastered the album. All songs (except “The Bed of Wasps”) were recorded using 6-string guitars, the first time since 2016’s On The Eve Of A Goodbye.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.