Continuing to highlight their transition from pop-punk act to borderline emo outfit, UK act As It Is have just premiered an intense new music video for their Great Depression track “The Reaper” featuring Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie.
“‘The Reaper’ is the moment in the record’s narrative where The Poet becomes so desensitized to the concept of death, that death appears and manifests before him, offering an 'escape’ — not in a malicious way, but as a means of release from the pain The Poet is feeling,” explains guitarist Ben Langford-Biss. “It was one of the most crucial and challenging moments in the narrative, and it was the last one that came together – lyrically and musically.”
Langford-Biss continued to add, “To confer these themes of turmoil and conflict, the sort of inner claustrophobia The Poet is experiencing, we wanted the video to be gritty and dark. We ended up taking visual influence from some of our favourite horror movies and TV series, and our director Zak Pinchin really clicked with what we were trying to get across. The video shows each of us waking up trapped in rooms, each room representing one of the four stages of grief that the record is chaptered into: denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. Each of us faces off with death in some respect —whether that be in a literal or metaphysical sense, and there is an external antagonist controlling the events in the rooms, forcing us to face our fears, our grief, or even ourselves. We were super excited that Aaron Gillespie was able to be a part of the video, to play the part of this puppeteer/antagonist!”
Lastly, the As It Is guitarist concluded, “Both the song and the video are so different to anything we’ve done before and we’re so fortunate that our fans have embraced the darker and heavier side of our band and our constant desire to progress in new directions.”
To check out the emotional new clip from As It Is to prepare you for their upcoming North American tour with Point North, see below. Afterward, to grab tickets to see the band, head here.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION TOUR ACT II: N. AMERICA
1/17 — Los Angeles, CA — Teragram Ballroom
1/18 — Camarillo, CA — Rock City Studios
1/19 — San Diego, CA — SOMA
1/20 — Mesa, AZ — Club Red
1/22 — Albuquerque, NM — Launchpad
1/24 — Oklahoma City, OK — 89th Street OKC
1/25 — San Antonio, TX — Jack’s Bar & Live Music Venue
1/27 — Houston, TX — The Secret Group
1/29 — Dallas, TX — The Prophet Bar
1/31 — Nashville, TN — The End
2/01 — Atlanta, GA Masquerade
2/02 — Tampa, FL — Crowbar
2/03 — Orlando, FL — The Social
2/05 — Chapel Hill, NC — Local 506
2/06 — Richmond, VA — Canal Club
2/07 — Philadelphia, PA — Voltage Lounge
2/09 — Asbury Park, NJ — House of Independents
2/10 — Cambridge, MA — Middle East
2/11 — Toronto, Canada — Velvet Underground
2/13 — Grand Rapids, MI — The Stache at the Intersection
2/14 — Columbus, OH — Woodlands Tavern
2/15 — Chicago, IL — Subterranean
2/16 — St. Louis, MO — Fubar
2/17 — Kansas City, MO — Encore at The Uptown Theater
2/19 — Denver, CO — Hi-Dive
2/20 — Salt Lake City, UT — Loading Dock
2/21 — Las Vegas, NV — Vinyl at Hard Rock Las Vegas
2/22 — Anaheim, CA — Chain Reaction
