THE CONTORTIONIST Release “1979” Music Video via CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND

February 20, 2020 Eric Peterson Brutal News, Press Releases, Tour Dates Comments Off

THE CONTORTIONIST RELEASE “1979” MUSIC VIDEO VIA CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND

OUR BONES EP OUT NOW

ON TOUR WITH DEVIN TOWNSEND IN
FEBRUARY / MARCH
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February 20, 2020 — The Contortionist have released a music video for their spot-on cover song of The Smashing Pumpkins 1995 hit “1979” via Consequence of Sound. Directed by vocalist Michael Lessard, this is the second music video we see from the band’s Our Bones EP released last year. Lessard also directed the music video for the title track “Our Bones” and can be seen below. Vocalist Michael Lessard comments:

We’re very excited to release a video for our cover of The Smashing Pumpkin’s timeless song “1979.” It’s a song that we all grew up with and hold dear to our hearts. It felt only fitting to use footage from the growing years of the band for this one.

The Contortionist will head back out on the road later this week to start their support tour with DEVIN TOWNSEND’s North America 2020 tour. Dates kick off in Toronto, Canada, at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on February 27, 2020, stretching coast to coast before wrapping up at The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on March 25.

Lessard continues, “We couldn’t be happier to finally be sharing the stage with a Devin Townsend and Haken. We’ve been working on some new things to bring to our live show, so we’re excited this is the tour we get to do that!”

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The Contortionist released Our Bones over the summer via Entertainment One / Good Fight Music to some high praise. Metal Hammer Magazine states, “Intense bursts of aggression intermingle with Sigur Rós-esque melodies while retaining those tech-leaning nuances.” PROG Magazine proclaims that the LP “Lurches back and forth shades of A Perfect Circle if they went to Hell and back.”

Crafted in the compound owned by producer/engineer John Douglass (Coheed & Cambria, Bad Wolves, Carnifex), where the guys were able to live and work, Our Bones began with some ideas Robby Baca would regularly run through at the band’s soundchecks.

“Once I was finally able to get Robby to record that riff we started piecing together the song in the back of the van, while on tour in Europe,” Lessard recalls. The result was lead single “Early Grave,” an expression of gratitude to the fans who’ve shared their stories of heartbreak, loneliness, and depression, and found new strength in the music of The Contortionist.

The band’s blistering new EP sees The Contortionist step outside the atmospheric storytelling of their critically-lauded conceptual masterpiece Clairvoyant (2017) to indulge an aggressive shadow side. More an anthology of standalone bursts of intensity, Our Bones isn’t a mere stopover between albums. It’s both a definitive look back and an ambitious leap forward.

“We try to do something different with everything we create,” explains Lessard. “With our albums, we tend to work with overarching interconnected themes. ‘Our Bones’ is a departure. It offered an opportunity to dive into some things we haven’t had a chance to explore, and the shorter EP format allowed us to be hyper-focused on each song.”

Our Bones was mixed and mastered by longtime collaborator Jamie King (Between The Buried And Me, Through The Eyes Of The Dead), who worked on Language and Clairvoyant.

While The Contortionist ultimately has proven themselves masters of psychedelic-enhanced experimentation and trippy melodicism, endearing them to fans of later period Enslaved and Sigur Ros alike, they have never entirely forsaken the urgent impact of tech-leaning extremity.

“From The Beatles to Pink Floyd to Mastodon, all the great rock bands in history have clear, non-linear musical trajectories,” Metal Sucks observed. “It’s great to see a band taking chances and moving forward. The result is a fully formed band, four albums in, to which no other bands compare. Literally: no one else sounds like The Contortionist even a little.”