Yellowknife’s Gnarwhal have teamed up with Metal Insider to premiere a video for their song, The War/Nothing More,” capturing the harsh reality of wildfires and evacuations that struck their hometown. The track is from their latest EP, Altered States, a darker, heavier follow-up to their debut, released this past May. Altered States, produced by Dan Ponich and mastered by David Collins, with artwork by Jonah Cutler, delves into themes of survival and introspection, blending doomy stoner sludge rock. The band overcame pandemic-related challenges to craft thisn EP, featuring tracks like “Tides” and “From Her Hands.”
The group comments:
“It was a messy, scary, disturbing, wild, incomprehensible, maddening, dangerous, and disorienting experience for an entire territory. We wanted to represent a fever dream version of our new reality as an act of personal catharsis that speaks to our reality that wildfires act as nature’s regenerative agent and bring forth rebirth. Sometimes, only through brutality and pain does life start new.
They were totally into undertaking this creative journey with us. The Creative Vision is a fever-dream assault on the senses, The War Nothing More tells the surreal experience of the band in the sudden throes of fighting for their northern home, burning to the ground by wildfire. Close to Yellowknife reality in 2023 but based in a strange alternate “Yellowknife”, this world is full of smoke, black charred forests, and strange illusions. Apocalyptic, surreal, and vibrating with strange energy.
After spitting out of the belly of a narwhal, the men are in possession of the last 4 ‘seeds’ available to mankind (not revealed til the end) and they must travel towards their demise across the desiccated landscape, surviving a dangerous and surreal journey to ‘plant’ the last ‘seeds’ in a specific location. There they will pay the ultimate sacrifice to initiate the regrowth of their charred world in a hot and searing fever dream.
Paying loose homage to the surreal style of Alejandro Jodorwosky films like Holy Mountain and El Topo, and utilizing new AI technology to raise the visual bar, mixing live action on a 360 8K camera that allows for maximum shooting ease, this is a visual journey that is to be felt/understood more on an emotional/subconscious level.”
Watch the clip below:
