U.K. death-metal rising stars Venom Prison are not ones to pull punches. Just check out the cover art to their acclaimed debut album, 2016’s Animus, to see what we mean: It’s a gorgeous Renaissance-style painting of a group of women forcibly castrating a man, the very literal visualization of one of the record’s key tracks, “Perpetrator Emasculation.” Activist frontwoman Larissa Stupar, who has been outspoken in her mission to turn death metal’s often-misogynistic gory imagery on its head, leads the provocative charge on the group’s follow-up, Samsara, due March 15th. (You can pre-order it here.) The album takes its name from the Buddhist concept of being reborn into a never-ending cycle of suffering, and plenty of suffering takes place in the music video for rip-roaring lead single “Uterine Industrialisation.” An excoriating statement about forced pregnancy, personal autonomy and religious hypocrisy, the song is perfectly matched with its clip, a body-horror short film that sees Stupar playing the role of an innocent pregnant woman who falls into the clutches of an apparent cult set on controlling her and seizing her newborn from the young mother. Cinematic footage portraying this narrative is intercut with scenes of the band shredding their hearts out in a high-ceilinged church, bathed in the crimson light of the stain-glass windows around them. Stupar is absolutely ferocious here, roaring with indelicacy against societal oppression, while her bandmates rip out barreling riffs and shrieking solos. It’s no wonder that Venom Prison are one of the most highly touted young extreme-metal bands on the planet right now. Check it out below.
