FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Anarchist Black Metallers Dawn Ray'd's New Video Is a Signal to Strike

Watch the fiery new clip for "Emptiness Beneath the Great Emptiness," taken off the rabble-rousing Scousers' latest album, 'The Unlawful Assembly.'
Photo by Töralf Isfjordson

I've already written about the Liverpool, UK anarchist black metal band Dawn Ray'd on here several times. We premiered their debut album, The Unlawful Assembly, back in 2017, describing it as "a Molotov cocktail of black metal, crust, ambient, neoclassical, screamo, and radical politics" (and I summarily managed to upset a few sensitive old metal dinks by writing about the band's explicitly leftist politics, whoops!). That same album featured in our 100 Best Albums of 2017 list, too, where I made mention of the "righteous and necessary fire burning inside of Dawn Ray’d" and generally got all gooey-eyed about how nice it is to see a band so perfectly straddle my musical tastes and political beliefs.

Advertisement

Given all that, when their new label (Prosthetic Records, for those keeping score at home) hit me up about premiering the below music video, I wasn't exactly going to say no, now was I?

The video clip for "Emptiness Beneath the Great Emptiness" interposes scenes of the band's hectic live shows with footage of burning churches, flaming Bibles, police brutality, mass revolt, various acts of criminal mischief, and the liberation of test animals from a lab by an ALF crew in black balaclavas.

"This video felt like the most honest and logical visualization of our songs we could make at this point," vocalist and violinist Simon B. told Noisy. "It needed to represent what this band is, both in the real world and our imaginations, and the balance of themes and emotions within both records. Music is escapism, but black metal is resistance. Let the fires burn as a signal!"

Watch it below, and snag the album from Prosthetic Records or Halo of Flies Records. Catch Dawn Ray'd at this year's Roadburn Festival and on tour throughout Europe and the UK.

Dawn Ray'd on tour:

April 1st - The Brewery - Scarborough, UK w' Ante Inferno
April 14th - Fulford Arms - York, UK w’ Bast
April 19th - Roadburn Festival - Tilburg, NL
May 2nd - Music City - Antwerp, BE
May 3rd - Alte Mereie - Kiel, DE
May 4th - Northern Discomfort - Copenhagen, DK
May 5th - DIY Fest - Nijmegen, NL
May 17th - Temple Of Boom - Leeds, UK w’ Coltsblood
June 1st - Halle, DE
June 2nd - Solitude Fest - Berlin, DE w’ Deathrite, Ancst
June 3rd - KLAUE - Braunschweig, DE
June 16th - 0161 Festival, Manchester, UK
Oct. 13th - Atmos-Fest1 - Nottingham, UK w/ Saor, Grift

Kim Kelly is raising the black flag high on Twitter.