Video Premiere: Entropy – “Americans Will Save You (In the End)”
Something for your metal fatigue.
I gotta be honest: I’m not feeling it lately. I’m not enjoying the latest blackened grinding abomination. I’ve no ear for bestial brutality of the void. Ominous susurrations in utter darkness do pretty little for me. In short, I’m not feeling the kind of extreme metal we mostly cover here.
I’m not sure how long this has been going on, but I can tell you that I’ve been looking forward to Dharmakāya, the upcoming full-length from Germany’s Entropy, for a good while, eager to dive into a little oasis of moody melodies and coherent compositions in a desert of acerbic avantgarde aggression.
For the uninitiated, Entropy are a prime example of what Joe and Jordan dubbed “Nü Alternative,” a genre mix marked by an unabashed love for popular rock of the mid-90s, often landing somewhere between grunge and shoegaze.
In Entropy’s case, it’s grunge without the jaded cynicism, and shoegaze without the pedalboard antics. What remains is a sound that’s clean, catchy, and above all, sincere. Get a slice of that with today’s premiere of “Americans Will Save You (in the End)”.
In case you’re detecting trace amounts of the aforementioned cynicism in that song title, I’ll let a fellow Hans (Frese, guitar and vocals) elaborate:
“‘Americans Will Save You (In the End)’ is a driving slab of alternative rock that veers between existential angst and potential personal liberation. I wrote it during a spell of depression, from which I managed to escape after reading some essays by the great American philosopher William James – hence, the Americans in the title.
The original riff was inspired by the Smashing Pumpkins, and the chorus actually marks the first time that palm-muted guitars have been used in an Entropy song. It is one of the poppiest tracks we’ve created so far, so much so that our engineer brought up The Police when we recorded it – and even though I’m not really a fan, I’ll take it!
The accompanying video picks up on the playful, somewhat ironic references to American culture and history in the lyrics. It offers a vision of the promises of the American dream while at the same time satirizing the overblown patriotic sentiment inherent in it. Still, both the song and the video refuse to entirely negate the positive utopian potential of a just world for all that might also be buried underneath all the patriotic bullshit. As Langston Hughes so eloquently wrote during WW II:
‘O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!'”
Dharmakāya will be released on August 30 via Crazysane Records.
Digital and physical formats (and shirts!) are up for pre-order on Bandcamp as well as the Crazysane Shop.
