American black metal meets tremolo infused post rock atmospheric band Ghost Bath have a lot to be excited about this month. Back in mid March, yours truly reviewed the entirety of Ghost Bath‘s latest offering, ‘Starmourner‘ and posted said review for the entire world to see (or at least the parts of the world that were paying attention. Click here for that full review.) April 21st marked the full launch of that album to the world at large and now, they’ve got a fresh new video for the lead single ‘Seraphic‘! The video opens with vocalist Dennis Mikula submerged, appropriately, in a bath tub full of water with his eyes closed. (Wondering why it’s apropos? That review explains why.) As the song kicks in, there are essentially two main visual points: either of the band members themselves (playing live together or playing dead in a tub) or of Middle Age/Renaissance era paintings and drawings featuring themes underlying Christianity and Judaism, which are essentially forks of the same belief system. While they don’t always see eye to eye (especially regarding that Jesus fella), the two share common threads, one of which being the lens through which they view angels…sort of. ‘Seraphic’ refers to the seraphim, whom, according to Christianity, were of the highest order of the nine of angels while Judaism places them at a solid ‘meh’, ranking them 5th out of ten orders. Given that the word seraph means ‘the burning one’, and they are associated with flying around God’s throne, it seems fitting that the medieval images are not only shown but at times superimposed over images of the band playing and of Mikula in his ghost bath, as if he’s seeing them in his mind’s eye while submerged. Lights flicker like a lightning addled sky when it switches from one frame to the next, and those flickers are in passages timed to fit the tempo changes in the song. Overall, it has a thought provoking feel to it’s composition, it definitely fits within the thematic elements of the album and with the very last image (no, I’m not telling), leaves the viewer wondering the actual fate of the narrator. Check out the official video below, and keep up with Ghost Bath via the book of Face by clicking here. You can get a sweet package deal on some of their music and merch here if you’re interested; if you’d rather purchase from Amazon, you’ll get a free mp3 copy available immediately while you wait for whichever physical format you prefer.
Here’s an official audio track from another track from ‘Starmourner’, “Thrones”, which was one of my favorite tracks from the full length:
