Lieutenant - “Believe The Squalor” (Official Video)

Lieutenant is the side project of Foo Fighters/Sunny Day Real Estate bassist Nate Mendel, and back in January we premiered the downtempo, melancholic single “Believe The Squalor.” It’s a soothing, spiraling track and indicative of the rest of the album If I Kill This Thing We’re All Going To Eat For A Week, which features a whole host of high-profile collaborators, including this song’s guests Page Hamilton (Helmet) on guitar and vocals from Josiah Johnson (The Head And The Heart). Today the band has released an accompanying video for the song that features figures from the black metal scene playing those parts: Pete Majors and Sandor G.F. of Harassor, Erik Kluiber of Ironaut on bass and Eli Santana, also of Holy Grail. Mendel said he was assembling his touring band for Lieutenant when he came up with the video’s campy, horror movie-style concept:

I was in the brackish zone between a solo project and a band and wasn’t sure of what the identity of the band would ultimately be. I thought, ‘Why not play that our by creating a performance video using the 100% incorrect musicians, in this case a black metal band?’ I texted the idea to a friend of mine, Jim Rota, who was a producer on the Sonic Highways project, and also fronts the metal band Fireball Ministry. He responded with a photo of Pete Majors covered in stage blood, on stage with his band Harassor.”

And that is how this gloriously over-the-top thing came together. It was directed by Matt Kubas.