If you couldn’t tell from the embed thumbnail, the following video contains some intense imagery.
Hardcore outfit Thirdface released their full-length record Do It With a Smile back in March of 2021. It’s twelve heavy and foreboding tracks delivered with intensely delivered vocals that explode with a cathartic ferocity. The band recently released the official video for “Villains!” and that catharsis manifests itself as a horror film serving as a gruesome message of empowerment for the working class.
The video depicts a group of rural working class individuals clearing up brush and chopping down trees, being beaten by their onlooking supervisors for pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion. One worker is visited by a visage of death and bestowed a weapon to enact revenge – a sequence that feels influenced by the likes of folk horror, Quentin Tarantino and the best cult films. Equipped with the protective power of the sword, the worker bestows a series of brutal deaths to those that wronged their crew, complete with excessive grindhouse blood splattering.
It’s a pretty safe bet that no one involved in the band or the video thinks that literal murder is the answer to the problems of the working class but it’s not much of a stretch to interpret the video as a reminder that the proletariat have it in their power to take on those in charge. It’s also entirely possible that there’s nothing to read in to here and it’s a straightforward horror story of revenge with a badass sword and a mystical creature from another realm. Either way, it’s worth a watch or two.
Do It With a Smile is streaming everywhere. They’re playing at DRKMTTR on September 5th. Go see them and ask them what the video really means.