Anyone who’s ever passed through, visited or lived in Portland, Oregon knows there’s an indefinable “Portlandness” to the city—an authentic mixture of counter-culture gonzo, dive-bar seediness and redneck intrigue, with a dash of uniquely PNW progressivism. Austin, Texas has fought to “Keep Austin Weird,” but Portland need not ever wage that battle because weird is already a significant part of its DNA and will be for the foreseeable future. That’s why a band like Murderbait could only be found in such a locale. The quartet—Casey Logan (vocals/synth/keyboard), Shamus McClellan (bass), Joey Bewley (drums/background vocals), Noel Thompson (guitar/background vocals)—mirrors the city’s dank underbelly with its depressive mixture of doomy post-punk goth pulsed with a spacey Krautrock thrum. Add a little dark religious iconography, a bound and hooded (nearly) naked man, and you have Murderbait’s latest video for the song, “In Holy Violence.”
“In Holy Violence” is a nearly eight-minute offering off of Murderbait’s Nostalgia Like Cancer, the band’s third full-length, which was self-released last April. That album (and this song) was recorded at Toadhouse Recordings by Adam Pike and mastered at Telegraph Mastering by Adam Gonsalves. The video was created by Portland cinematographer/editor TRIANGLES and was produced by the band and and Triangles Around Us. You can order Nostalgia Like Cancer and Murderbait’s previous releases here.
This is what Casey Logan had to say about Murderbait’s new video:
“‘In Holy Violence’ is a song about struggling between longing to experience life and a fatal weariness to continue on at all, as well as the complicated dynamics that come with shedding indoctrinated guilt and self loathing for simply being human at all. The images of someone being bound ritualistically is symbolic of the traditions, cultures and dogma many of us were raised in and continue to be surrounded by and the shame and limitations it causes. The images of fire are there representing how the world and existence as a human being has increasingly felt over time, geopolitically, socially, and of course environmentally. These are strange and difficult times to somehow try to find any semblance of peace or happiness.”