New York-based noise rock band, Uniform, recently released the music video for their latest single “Life in Remission” off their newly released fourth full-length studio album, Shame, via Sacred Bones Records. The accompanying music video for Uniform’s “Life in Remission” premiered Thursday, September 10 following Shame‘s official album release the very next day Friday, September 11.
According to a press release, “Shame marks the debut of Mike Sharp on drums, adding a natural fire to the engine. His presence grinds down their metallic industrial edge with a live percussive maelstrom. This time around, they’ve joined forces with Randall Dunn (Marissa Nadler, Sun O))), Earth) to perfect their powerful hybrid of digital and analog, electronic and acoustic, synthetic and actual that has become their hallmark.”
The accompanying music video for “Life in Remission” is best described as a bleak piece of performance art complete with lead vocalist Michael Berdan covered in some sort of white plaster. The band’s insignia, featured on the cover art for Shame, opens up the video with other iconography featured in the black-and-white shot music video. Berdan showcases his blisteringly guttural shouting vocals, which sounds distorted amidst the equally bombastic production. The video first depicts Berdan’s head held by hands for which the viewer never sees the person’s face. The video has creepy crawly insects scatted pervasively throughout the music video. The video ends with Berdan’s plastered figured’s head smashed in by a small blunt tool, leaving Berdan shaking convulsively on the floor. The very last frame of the video features one of the insects motionless on it’s back. To listen to “Life in Remission” stream below, via YouTube.
Uniform have released four full-length studio albums, since their inception in 2013, including their 2015 debut Perfect World, their 2017 sophomore follow-up Wake in Fright, their third studio album The Long Walk and 2020’s Shame. The collective’s sound ranges in an amalgamation of fusions from industrial, electronic, thrash and punk. Their current roster is comprised of frontman Michael Berdan (lead vocals) and Ben Greenberg (guitar). Speaking on their latest single, according to the aforementioned press release, Uniform’s frontman Berdan details the genesis behind the lyrics, saying:
“The lyrics of ‘Life In Remission’ deal with loss, guilt, and the facade of a stable life. It’s about the persistent voice in my head constantly telling me that I’m a fraud and urging me toward self destruction. It’s about becoming numb to tragedy. It’s about seeing those around me suffer and die and knowing all too well that it just as easily could have been me a million times over. It’s a song of equal parts anger, regret, and cold despondency.”
Speaking on the music video’s harrowing visuals, director A.F. Cortes offers his hands on visceral approach to the music video, saying:
“With this video, I wanted to use the body as a communication tool of chaos. A deconstruction story told through ritual and action. Two friends’ bond is gone wrong from a visceral and perverse perspective. Inspired by abstract expressionism, instead of playing opposites with the music, I wanted to match its intensity like a Jackson Pollock painting, a piece that feels filthy, messy, claustrophobic, yet beautiful and contained.”
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