Following the releases of a new song, “Men Today,” and their latest album, Death Magic, Los Angeles-based noise band Health are back with a new video for their album’s second single, “Stonefist.”
Before we delve into talking about the video’s content, we do want to issue the warning that this video has been deemed not safe for work (NSFW), as it depicts rather graphic images of staged simulations of surgery.
The video, itself, opens with a series of jump cuts to visuals like a girl with long hair in silhouette, what appears to be a human skull sitting on a table, a person cloaked in black holding a microphone up high, and a number of back lit feet that are pointed.
At approximately 0:15 seconds in, the band starts rocking out on a shadowed and back lit sound stage, before the camera cuts away to a bright hospital light, before fading into darkness again to settle onto a man that is seemingly pursuing the girl with the long brunette hair, who was briefly introduced earlier to viewers. And, then the video goes back to showing the band’s lead vocalist in action, before cutting away again to a close up of cotton swabs, scalpels, scissors, white tape, and a series of other medical instruments that are neatly laid out on a tray that’s been covered with blue protective absorbent liners.
After a few more jump cuts, viewers begin to see things from the surgeon’s angle with respect to one of the camera angles that depicts hands working in an opened wound on someone’s body. A later shot depicts the cutting of excess skin in what is thought to be a face lift-style procedure, but in a later shot that theory is disproven. The surgeon was altering the faces of his patients, but in a way that “was never going backwards,” to quote the lyrics.
To see exactly what type of facial enhancements the patients received, check out the video, below.