While earlier this month saw the release of Austin Feinstein’s first album under the Slow Hollows moniker as a solo endeavor, today we’re getting news that former bandmate Jackson Katz is releasing his latest collection of songs under the Brutus VIII moniker via the same label. Slated to arrive May 10 via Danger Collective, Pure Gluttony marks Katz’s first new music since 2019’s Beyond LP and his appearance on last year’s Current Joys LP—which evidently set the scene for the more abrasive sound Pure Gluttony seems to take as suggested by lead single “Building a Bomb.”
Maintaining his familiar post-punk vocal incantations, the new track explores more maximalist sounds across industrial metal and no wave while Katz’s lyrics dip into political satire inspired by Don DeLillo’s Mao II and Paul Aster’s Leviathan. “It’s me poking fun at performative political activism while also expressing some fears about domestic terrorism,” he shares. “In the last decade it seems casual mass violence has become the new normal. This makes me profoundly uncomfortable. The lyrics and music are written to reflect that.”
This explanation helps clarify what we’re seeing in the song’s tension-building music video directed by Kelsea Bauman Murphy, wherein a seemingly organized group of individuals pass off an ominous tote bag. “When we were figuring out what to do for the video, we watched movies that really graphically depict mass violence, like Alan Clarke’s Elephant about the troubles in Ireland, and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant about Columbine,” the director shares. “We wanted to capture a similar tension, making the viewer anticipate that violence could be around any corner. But we also felt like we had seen plenty of shootings and bombs on screen, so we tried to build on those other art works by showing the cyclical nature of a gun getting passed off from person to person but not showing where it goes—because the shit never ends, anyone could have a gun anytime, anywhere. It’ll go off sometime.”
Check out the video below, and pre-order Pure Gluttony here.
