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Revvnant Take on Gun Culture with “Automatic” Video

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I don’t feel like it’s a risky political position to not support murder either on a mass or individual scale. Violence is a ubiquitous and foundational part of American culture, from the ongoing subjugation of the Native American population as part of the colonial process, to the continued stain on the nation’s soul that slavery represents — implicit bias, cultural appropriation, casual racism, fear, microaggression; it’s its own list — to the regular slaughters that pepper the news, to the rise of Antisemitism and xenophobic jingoism, to the glorification of rape for shock value in media at the same time an entire landscape of sexual violence is being unveiled, to every time a husband batters his wife behind a closed door and no one ever knows about it, or worse, everyone does but can’t or won’t do anything in response. As a people, we are complicit in violence against the earth itself every time we wear mass-produced clothing, eat Roundup-treated produce shipped by a truck, or run tap water through a 60-year-old lead pipe, use a car, plug in a refrigerator, or heat our homes. It is the way the world has been arranged for us and for as long as there is a planet hosting us, it is the inheritance our species will pass to the subsequent generations that follow our path, either blindly or conscious of their own shame.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe these things or not. Glaciers fall into water. People die. Life proceeds until it doesn’t. And violence was by no means invented by America, though American gun culture, as Revvnant‘s Elias Schutzman examines in the new single “Automatic,” does seem to be something that, at least for now, is particular to the national character. In the “Automatic” video, drone-wave undulations of riff and far-back dream-style vocals are set to footage of firearms being shot and various other portrayals of violence throughout culture, some insidious — televangelist preachers knocking people over to heal them, snakedancers, Charlie Manson, etc. — some subtle like the staring eyes of Bill Cosby selling Coke, Burt Reynolds smacking Marc Summers from Double Dare on The Tonight Show, and so on. But the visual hook is guns, and the focus is guns. Schutzman, formerly the drummer of The Flying Eyes and currently also in Black Lung, is hardly the first to tackle the subject, but the means through which he and Christopher Stone and Dave Gibson — who made the video — use it to tie the various sides together into a single description/perspective is clever and no less hypnotic than the song, which sets its trance around the refrain, “You’d better pray that god is really dead.”

So be it.

Revvnant, which also features Trevor Shipley (who worked with both The Flying Eyes and Black Lung in the past) alongside Schutzman, are donating proceeds from this debut single to the March for Our Lives via their Bandcamp, and there are far worse ways you could spend your money. Like on a gun. Or a snake.

Video and info follow:

Revvnant, “Automatic” official video

Elias Schutzman on “Automatic”:

“Automatic” is my livid critique of American gun culture, the epidemic of mass shootings, and the profiteers who lobby to keep the system in place. It’s just one of the many viruses that have infected our society. People have an almost erotic obsession with their firearms. Many will claim it’s for safety, when the hard facts show owning a gun makes you statistically less safe. I think it’s really about a false sense of power, when you feel powerless about everything else in life. And after every mass murder, gun sales go up, and masters of this bloody industry get richer…”

Video created by Christopher Stone and Dave Gibson

Buy the single here: https://revvnant.bandcamp.com/track/automatic
All proceeds will be donated to March For Our Lives (marchforourlives.com).

Lyrics:
“Words carry disease
Murder feeds families
God killed himself from shame

You’d better pray
That god is really dead

All hearts flirt with insanity
Tools of men worshipped so easily
Auto-erotic war machines
Breed violence, a quest for infamy

You’d better pray
That god is really dead

Where do we place the blame?
Evil, a flawed society?
Or masters of blood and industry?

You’d better pray
That god is really dead.”

Revvnant is Elias Schutzman (Vocals, Synthesizers, Programming), with Trevor Shipley on guitar.

Mixed by Mickey Freeland
Mastered by Alan Douches

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Revvnant on Bandcamp

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