Today is 4 May. Bank holiday for some, annoying Star Wars joke day for others. For three Toronto punks however, it’s the day they unleash their new album into the world. Written and recorded in 2014 after two years of constant touring of their self-titled debut, II stems from a period of loss, doubt and contemplating relationships with death and the planet and, most importantly, the need to create chaos. “We try to maintain right on the verge of disaster, just tipping over. Right on the precipice,” singer Alex Edkins told the Guardian. “If you can smother a melody in noise and grit, to me, that’s perfect.”
To celebrate, the band are releasing a new video for The Swimmer, featuring scenes as equally unsettling as the music itself. “This technique of moving the footage forwards and backwards on small loops I saw in some rap videos, and I thought it would be great to do an entire video like that. It matched the sound of The Swimmer really well I thought, and thematically it reflected the idea in the song of trying to swim against the current but being stuck and never moving forward. The basic concept for the video, beyond that, was to have everybody at the height of emotion at all times. Everything at 10. This guy is obviously having a pretty bad day, but he’s trying,” said director Scott Cudmore.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
