Idles haven’t phoned it in when it comes to the videos for their latest album, Ultra Mono. They dropped an animated video, one made with Michel Gondry, and now they’ve returned with a left turn of a visual for “Reigns.”
The video goes back and forth between people sitting down to watch a nature documentary and clips of animal violence, with the people seemingly reacting in glee as nature brutally does its thing. In fact, some of the clips are so gory that it’s worth including a warning about here.
The band’s Joe Talbot previously said of the song, “This was written around the bass, obviously. Again, another movement — techno — and that idea of togetherness and the love in the room is always apparent. Techno is motorik, it’s mesmeric, it is just a singularity — minimal techno, especially. It’s just the beat or the bass line and that carries you through, that’s all you need. Obviously, we’re a chorus band, so we thought we’d throw in something huge to cut through it. But we didn’t want to overcomplicate it. That sinister pound just reminds me of my continual disdain for the Royal Family and everything they represent in our country, from the fascism that it comes from to the smiley-face racism that it perpetuates nowadays.”
Watch the “Reigns” video above.