Video Premiere: Lamniformes "Deep Despair in Covington, KY"

Today, March 15th, is the third anniversary of Lamniformes’ fantastic album ‘Sisyphean’. To celebrate, Ian shared the long lost music video for the song “Deep Despair In Covington, KY” which was directed and edited by former Lamniformes bassist Parker Langvardt.

Here is an excerpt taken from Ian’s newsletter about the band, drumming, and more… Sign up for yourself here. (It’s really good!)

And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of this album on cassette tape, beautifully designed by Joseph Klomes, you can do so here.

Parker and I originally shot this video in the summer of 2019 in my apartment and the nearby streets in Sunset Park. Parker then applied his skills as a video synthesist to give it the digitally warped look that we were going for. Then after we wrapped the video sat in the vaults for years. Why the delay? Well, we both got sidetracked by other projects, tours, and global pandemics. Still, better late than never.

Moreover, it feels right to release this video on the backend of a Bellows tour. I wrote the lyrics for “Deep Despair” while on my first tour with Bellows all the way back in 2012 (!?!?!) when we barely avoided a broken car catastrophe on the drive from Mufreesboro to Covington. By the time we reached the venue we were convinced that we were cosmically screwed. We didn’t know a soul in Covington and had no idea where we would stay that night, if our car even decided to start again after the show ended. Everything turned out ok, but sitting in a diner as far from home as that tour took us in a rusted over town I felt like I was standing at the lip of an abyss, one wrong step away from being swallowed whole by the world.

Bellows also had an indirect influence on the sound of the song. Before joining the band I had no interest in Mount Eerie or The Microphones. Not out of any disdain for Phil Elverum’s work, it just wasn’t on my radar. Well, after two weeks in a Toyota Camrey with Oliver Kalb my radar was roaring with lo-fi records. While I’ve spent the most time listening to Elverum’s Clear Moon and Ocean Roar, which both got some play in the Bellows-mobile on that tour, it was Wind’s Poem and The Microphones’ Mount Eerie that had the most profound effect on my music. I’ve always had one foot in a combat boot in the world of metal and the other in a beat up sneaker in the world of indie rock. Hearing Elverum try and bridge those two on Wind’s Poem from a DIY songwriter angle inspired me to do the same from the other side of the gap. “Deep Despair” is, as best as I could accomplish, a metal song reaching to shake hands with the world of lo-fi indie. I think I did a pretty good job.