For over twenty years, Canadian grindcore act Fuck The Facts have been snarling in the face of comfortable living and polite society. The Ottowa three-piece have 11 studio albums to their name, thought it’s really with recent releases like 2o11’s Die Miserable and 2015’s Desire Will Rot that the band have broken through to bigger audiences and become a mainstay of the underground music scene. Now, Fuck The Facts have teamed up with filmmaker David Hall to create a video for their track “Dropping Like Flies,” and man, it is not for the weak of heart.
The video is animated, though not in a traditional or cartoony style. Instead, Hall merges photo manipulation with stock footage to illustrate the terrifying truth about North America’s current pharmaceutical crisis. The video’s mixture of psychedelic imagery and gut-wrenching truths we all know feels powerful while never coming off as ponderous or preachy.
“[Hall’s] unique approach to making videos has always been inspiring to us and we’ve always given him carte blanche (just watch our video for ‘Everywhere Yet Nowhere”),” says Fuck The Facts guitarist Topon Das. “For the ‘Dropping Like Flies’ video Dave manages to give the viewer an uncomfortable and satirical look at the devastating opioid epidemic. Highlighting just how much this issue is not taken seriously enough.”
“The main inspiration for the video for ‘Dropping Like Flies’ came directly from Mel [Mongeon, vocals]’s lyrics,” says Hall. “She eloquently sings about addiction as an epidemic and society’s response: “help isn’t on the way.” I wanted to present a vision of hopelessness, the brutal ravaging of addiction, the pervasiveness of prescription meds, the economic forces that conspire, and show some faces not commonly presented as addicts: white people, senior citizens, the middle and upper class. Addiction transcends all demographics. God sends flies to wounds he should heal. Pills rain down from heaven.”
Check out “Dropping Like Flies” below:
Fuck The Facts’ latest album Pleine Noirceur is out now on Noise Salvation Records.
***
Words by Chris Krovatin
