Early in 2021, when the borders were still closed and the world was (lol) still in turmoil, someone said something to us that I’ll never forget. She said, “Just finding one small thing to be happy about every day is an act of revolution.” It stuck with me; not because I believe that all revolution depends upon is me finding a few minutes to be glad I’m alive each day. But because I recognize that life is full of stress and strife, and those few moments of love or joy are a personal revolution in a world that really wants us all to suffer and pay for false solutions.
I’m thinking about this while I watch the new video from HEAVY HALO for their single “Failure.” The band used footage of actual computer viruses from the ’90s, known as Crucifixion, Fear, Ithaqua, Morphine, Murcia, and Possessed — and I can see why Y2K was so terrifying to people. It wasn’t a cute fashion algorithm, it was the spectre of a melting computer screen and the meltdown of the global systems as we knew them in 1999. Set to HEAVY HALO’s thundering, soaring industrial metal sounds, I can feel the pessimistic but hopeful energy that we had, worrying that the world might end, but remembering that we’d all survived the old worlds. “Failure.” lives in that place of purgatory between devastation and resilience, and it’s loud, crushing atmosphere pushes you through the gap. It’s off their upcoming record Damaged Dream coming out April 15th via Silent Pendulum Records — pre-order it here or here.
‘Failure.’ is the heaviest and most severe song on Damaged Dream. It’s about how nihilism is a cognitive virus that spreads when your ideals shatter at the hands of cold reality. When you watch everyone you know suffer at various points in their lives you have to face the wreckage of your own innocence. So once that’s gone, what do you have left? Well there’s power and resilience in desperation and catharsis. For us, we’re just trying to write our way out of hell. Creating in spite of the void is its own victory.
– McKeever, vocals
