Swedish metallers Avatar have returned with new music and visuals. On Thursday, the band released a music video for their latest single, “Silence in the Age of Apes.”
According to a press release announcing the video:
“Silence in the Age of Apes” is “a ready-made anthem for the modern age searching for a collective meaning amidst the savagery of technology. From the very first riff of the explosive lead single, listeners will find a darker, futuristic, and entirely new version of Avatar.”
A “stunning visual” with story scenes filmed in black and white and performance scenes filmed in color, the video also provides fans with their first view of the band’s new red and black leather album-cycle wardrobe. It’s a less elaborate style than the one used during their previous album cycle, but one that fits with the supposed darker, rawer feel of the new album.
“Silence in the Age of Apes” is the debut single from Avatar’s upcoming eighth studio album, Hunter Gatherer, out August 7 on Entertainment One (eOne). According to the press release, the new album:
“is an unflinchingly ruthless study of a clueless humankind’s ever-increasing velocity into an uncertain future, furthering the reach of the band’s always expanding dark roots. The forthcoming album is the darkest, most sinister version of the band yet, with deep studies of cruelty, technology, disdain, and deprivation.”
Recorded at Sphere Studios in Los Angeles, California with producer Jay Ruston (Stone Sour, Slipknot, Anthrax) in 2019, Hunter Gatherer found the band recording as one unit in the booth (as if performing live) for the first time since the recording of 2014’s Hail the Apocalypse. The album was also recorded “entirely to two-inch tape,” a move the press release says “exhibits everything that makes Avatar standouts in the vast, rich landscape of heavy metal’s past and present.”
“I’m trying to put across certain emotions that maybe, myself as a lyricist, maybe I wasn’t comfortable with in the past,” frontman Johannes Eckerström told Loudwire about the new album late last year.
“Saying there’s something wrong over there is different than turning a finger and pointing it at yourself. It takes some maturity to start to do that and maybe revisit places I was at in the past and shine a more honest light upon it. It’s full of those things that I have never done before, we have never done before, and thus it’s completely different again.”
He continued:
“There is no joking around with this, and it pulls us back into reality. It deals more with darkness, sadness, detachment, alienation and the anxiety of thinking of the world at large. It’s all these things that don’t necessarily fit into the ‘let’s write this love letter to heavy metal and share our inside joke that we call Jonas The King.’”
Avatar released their last album, Avatar Country, in 2018. The album was a hit with both fans and critics, debuting at #2 on the Indie chart, #4 on Hard Music, #8 on Rock and #25 on the Billboard 200.
‘Hunter Gatherer’ is available for pre-order now.
