Video Premiere: Forming The Void’s “Arrival”

As is a well-known fact by now, Lousiana is a hot-spot for metal. Somehow, the stars aligned and the state has habitually produced some of the greatest slow, scathing music for years and years. If you venture just over 100 miles west of New Orleans, you’ll find yourself in Lafayette; here, Forming The Void has been crafting their brand of stoner/sludge metal for five years. Following the success of their 2017 Relic, the group has already completed their fourth LP, Rift. Set for release on August 17th via Kozmic Artifactz, we have the honor of premiering the video for “Arrival,” the second single from the upcoming record. Think Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” from The Song Remains The Same goes stoner metal…

Vocalist/guitarist James Marshall said of the track and video, “‘Arrival’ is probably something our fans have come to expect. It’s a fuzzy psychedelic progressive tune with stoner elements and an otherworldly theme. This is a good representation of who we are as a band. A lot of our songs have a meaning, but aren’t straight-forward. The video really encompasses that since it means something but it’s more like a puzzle that’s open to interpretation. So viewer to viewer, listener to listener everyone can get something out of it. Nathan Tucker did the video. He’s a wizard when it comes to production. We talked about what we were envisioning for the song and he ran with it. It’s really psychedelic, blown out, with a lot of cool macro shots and layering.”

Nathan Tucker, who has also directed videos for fellow Louisiana bands Mehenet and Space Cadaver, explained further, “I found ‘Arrival’ to be a song about the infinite turning finite, and vice versa. Visually, I was aiming to show a cyclical journey, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. By building landscapes from minute forms (like rocks, sand, and bone) to make them appear as vast landscapes. This also involved making the human form appear flat and underdeveloped. The culmination comes with the squaring of the circle, a concept of how the finite and infinite conjoin. I was lucky to have the wonderful support of Jorge Crespo of Tooth and Nail Productions out here in New Orleans who did principal shooting with the amazing Elyse The Beast. I convinced both of them to follow me into an abandoned mill and potentially burn ourselves up. If you’re gonna do something, it might as well be potentially fatal. Ricardo Betancourt helped me shoot/actualize the simple but effective macro bellows systems that most of the music video was shot with. Lastly, Lee Garcia of Algae Kids who took the time to downgrade the video to VHS for an added layer of dirt that I’m so fond of.”

Forming The Void will play Psycho Las Vegas the weekend that Rift comes out (8/17), followed by a short tour (9/27-10/7), including a show at Descendants of Crom in Pittsburgh on the 9/29. Find upcoming shows via Facebook.

Watch the new video for “Arrival” below: