After a two year wait since Karaoke’s 2018 debut EP How To Make You Boil, the East Atlanta music scene favorite is back with their first full length album Blood, Piss, Religion, Pain. Today, Karaoke invites us to embrace the darkness with their new single and moody, noir music video for “Ride Off Into The Doom.”
“Ride Off Into The Doom” arrives as the fourth in a series of five music videos in support of Blood, Piss, Religion, Pain. Each video stars a single member of Karaoke. So far we’ve seen drummer Adrian Benedykt Switon sensually eating pizza, guitarist Tymb Gratz stripping off a comical amount of clothing, and bassist Chris Yonker having a difficult time eating breakfast. “Ride Off Into the Doom” is centered on vocalist and guitarist Grace Bellury. Maybe.
Karaoke’s most defining feature is Grace Bellury’s feminine, ethereal voice floating atop their signature dramatic instrumentation. However, “Ride Off Into The Doom” completely subverts conventional depictions of a front woman.Her presence in the music video is more like negative space than anything else. For much of “Ride Off Into The Doom,” Bellury appears as but an outline, shrouded in shadow, and swaying her hips. The choreography, while simple, is spectacularly effective. Shape and movement are more important here than Bellury herself.
When the lights do come up to expose the silhouette’s face, Bellury quickly turns away from the camera to reveal a mask on the back of her head. The only face we ever get a good look at is a fake one. Even while pantomiming a mic’d vocal performance near the end of the video, her head is wrapped in fabric. Bellury’s anonymity is the star of the video, not her: she could be anyone.
But maybe you have to lose parts of yourself to identify your most defining features. Despite this, “Ride Off Into The Doom” finds Karaoke at their most unique and realized. Where tracks like How To Make You Boil’s “Guts” or 2019 one-off single “Baby” have flirted with being dark and haunting, “Ride Off Into The Doom” is more potent and blatant. It’s poignant, sinister, and illustrates that Karaoke’s most self-actualized work is yet to come.
Blood, Piss, Religion, Pain will be available on digital platforms November 22 with a limited cassette run released on Pink House Tapes.
