Alongside the release of DAMNUM, Allegaeon’s sixth full-length album, on Friday, Feb. 25, the band shared a new music video for their song “Vermin.” The new album, song and video follow the band’s previous single, their single “Of Beasts and Worms” and its accompanying video. 

The songs weave together to form the DAMNUM album with their haunting exploration of the human psyche.

“Vermin” discusses unsavory characters and how they seek to pull decent people down to no avail. These “creatures/Skin of humans, souls of ghosts” are described in a way that encourages fear from the audience. On exploring these themes, Allegaeon vocalist Riley McShane said, “We have had some personal encounters with extremely predatory and ill-natured figures in this industry and ‘Vermin’ is dedicated to them.”

The video is shot with low lighting, so it’s often a struggle to make out the features of the band members when they’re in frame. The video is already figuratively dark, and Allegaeon has made it glaringly, literally dark as well. 

The video alternates between scenes of the band and a plotline based in what looks like a room of horrors. Rats are kept in the room alongside a pair of people who are chained up, one of whom is then medievally tortured. 

The perpetrator and similar subjects are so wrapped up in their malice that they lack what makes people human, what Allegaeon has dubbed “the flame.” While these “monster[s], a nightmare descending” have lost their humanity, McShane speaks for the masses who haven’t, who have a “flame/That burns alive inside us and rages…/That never dies, only morphs and/shapes us again.” 

Allegaeon will be touring with Finnish metal band Omnium Gatherum starting on Feb. 26 in Brooklyn, NY.