Philadelphia hardcore rock band Nothing has released a brand new song and video called “Bernie Sanders.” The song serves as the second single off the group’s upcoming full-length studio album The Great Dismal, which will be released on October 30 via Relapse Records.

The video for “Bernie Sanders” was directed by Jordan Hemingway and depicts some grotesque, disturbing imagery of a man performing a ritual in an abandoned house as the thumping, steady rock track stomps along. Hemingway does an impressive job of creating a creep feeling throughout the clip and both the song and video come together for quite an impressionable and unsettling conclusion.

Discussing the band’s new track, founder and primary songwriter Domenic Palermo says, “Originally, it was about being lost in Japan… both figuratively, and literally. While searching relentlessly for an answer, you typically find yourself unearthing deeper meaning and often prompting more questions. By the end of it all you don’t even know if you were ever lost at all or if you were exactly where you were supposed to be the whole time. I really don’t even know what it means anymore.”

According to a press release, The Great Dismal was recorded throughout quarantine in collaboration with producer Will Yip at Pennsylvania’s famed Studio Four. The album “explores existentialist themes of isolation, extinction, and human behavior in the face of 2020’s vast wasteland.”

“The Great Dismal refers to a swamp, a brilliant natural trap where survival is custom fit to its inhabitants,” Palermo says of the record. “The nature of its beautiful, but taxing environment and harsh conditions can’t ever really be shaken or forgotten too easily.”

The album will drop just before the band’s ten year anniversary and marks the group’s fourth full-length LP after Guilty of Everything (2014), Tired of Tomorrow (2016) and Dance on the Blacktop (2018), all three of which were also released on the Relapse Records label. The new album is available for pre-order now and will be released in LP, CD and digital formats.

Photo credit: Raymond Flotat