Hive Promises That "Tomorrow Will Be Worse" (Video Premiere)
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Minneapolis crust quartet Hive is paying attention, which is exactly why the band is so angry. Their latest full-length Most Vicious Animal comprises bleak d-beat that refuses to relent. The group harnesses the ferocious tenacity of His Hero is Gone, using that energy to rail against senseless war and humans’ insatiable craving for violence.
Streaming below, the video for “Tomorrow Will Be Worse” utilizes “real found footage of the aftermath of the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” says guitarist-vocalist Morgan Carpenter. Not for the faint of heart, “The intent of the video is not to shock but to illuminate inhumanity,” he explains. The music of the song reflects its lyrical content with serrated crust that eats away at contentment. Drummer Michael Paradise blazes forth with a tireless drum charge that gets covered by roaring vocals and abrasive riffage. It’s not easy listening; it wouldn’t make sense if it was.
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With the video, Hive pays tribute to the Japanese people America killed during WWII by highlighting the true horror that the United States unleashed. “We chose to modify the concept of the lyric video,” Carpenter says, “translating the lyrics to Japanese in tribute, and featuring them as subtitles to the video.” That choice was influenced by “the continued failure of the American government to take accountability for the act since then.” According to Carpenter, the United States has yet to do anything meaningful to make up for the unfathomable damage of dropping two nuclear bombs.
It’s tempting to view the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from a certain distance as abstract events that happened in a faraway time. Hive is trying to close that distance with “Tomorrow Will Be Worse.” Carpenter says that “the title of the song is a direct reference to the physical and psychological effects of the surviving victims of the bombings years and decades after the initial event.” Nuclear attack is not something a place and its inhabitants ever escape. Hive asks that people recognize that.
Social outrage is nothing new for Hive. The band’s previous LP, Parasitic Twin, takes aim at capitalistic greed and the savagery of those who profit from that system and strive to uphold it. Most Vicious Animal focuses on something deeper: the violence of the human spirit itself. For Carpenter, it’s an unavoidable fact that “mankind is the greatest threat to the existence of all things.” Instead of attempting to curb our worst instincts, the most barbarous aspects of humanity continue to dominate the world.
Most Vicious Animal gets its title from an Anton LaVey quote. Man is “[j]ust another animal,” the famous Satanist once said, “more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his ‘divine spiritual and intellectual development’ has become the most vicious animal of all!” It’s not an easy truth to digest. As Hive reminds us, though, it’s a necessary one to examine.
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Most Vicious Animal released August 2nd via Crown and Throne Ltd..
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