Nashville’s alternative/rock band Blackout Balter has announced their new album, Animal which is set to be out on July 24th.
To get a taste of the new album, the band has released the opening track and lead single, “Red Letter.” The raw sense of urgency in the track paints a portrait of a parallel universe where fame becomes their failing.
For this single the band comments, “We wanted to do a single-camera, single-shot video that focused on a man’s encountering his conscience and ‘internal demons’ so-to-speak, and gaining some form of enlightenment through his interaction with strange animal figures—people wearing animal masks,” says Phil Cohen, Blackout Balter’s frontman. “As I walk through the house in the video, these animals literally give me everything I need: some clothing, a drink, a microphone, a red letter. But there’s a price to pay for all of this; and we wanted to represent this ‘price’ through the girl’s emotional state. At the end of the video, I put on an animal mask and join the animals, who—strangely enough—are protecting and comforting the girl. It’s poetic. And the video runs in-line with the essence of the song ‘Red Letter’ itself.”
They go on to say, “The concept of the video is simple, and the shooting technique was simple too—single-camera, single-shot—but it was actually very hard to get right because we needed to do it all in one take. I have a new appreciation for Matthew McConaughey’s single-shot scene from True Detective,” laughs Phil Cohen, Blackout Balter’s frontman. “We knew we wanted a man to encounter his conscience and ‘internal demons’ in a physical form, represented by the people wearing animal masks. And we knew we wanted the two lead characters—the girl and me—to experience a significant change in this short video. In the end, the thing that tears these two characters apart is the very thing in which they find comfort, as they both join the animals at the end of the video. I think this story-line does a good job representing the essence of the song Red Letter.”
Animal is a rush of punk and alt-rock energies, which consist of unapologetic assertions of love, struggle, and leaving. The fourteen track album is set to get the adrenaline pumping and has songs that are set to inspire, excite, and push us to attack our dreams.
