Melbourne’s High Tension have unveiled a fierce new video for their track Veil, taken from their latest album Purge, out now 15 on Cooking Vinyl Australia.
The video was directed by High Tension bass player Matt Weston and features animation and visual effects from Lo! guitarist, Carl Whitbread.
High Tension vocalist Karina Utomo describes the track:
“A gaze into the systems of fear through the myth of a parallel universe. Veil is the symbolism, the separation between the human world and the metaphysical, the inner and outer self.
Fire, mutation, and distortion allude to the myth of the Jinn — a being made of fire, existing in a parallel universe with the power to morph into human and animal; a ruse, deception.Veil peruses the systems of fear (the myth of the Jinn) and their purpose as a means to gain control. The unveiling of truth, the conscious and subconscious existence and the process of unbinding reality and delusion.”
The band have also announced their only shows for 2019, playing Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney next month.
The band’s third album is a powerful piece of work, filled with the sound of frustration, fear, disgust, horror, hatred and – yes – rage, spewed up and moulded into the Melbourne quartet’s most extreme statement yet.
While tradition would suggest heavy acts only lose their intensity with each record, the opposite is true of High Tension. “This was always the direction we were heading into.” Says vocalist Karina Utomo.
After forming in Melbourne in 2012, High Tension’s debut album, the following year’s Death Beat, was nominated for an ARIA Award for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal album, while its follow-up, 2015’s Bully, received widespread critical acclaim and saw the group hit the road in support of acts such as Refused.
The High Tension of 2018, however, is a different beast to the one that released those records, thanks to the presence of Mike Deslandes and drummer Lauren Hammel, who both joined after the release of Bully in 2015. (Co-founding bassist Matt Weston completes the line-up). In that regard, Utomo views Purge as a resetting of the High Tension blueprint.
“It was inevitable that we were going to produce a record unlike our previous work; with Lauren and Mike joining the band, our natural response was to reshape our sound.”
HIGH TENSION 2019 SHOW DATES
3 AUGUST – BREWTALITY FEST, TOTE/BENDIGO HOTEL, MELBOURNE
8 AUGUST – CROWBAR 7TH BIRTHDAY, BRISBANE
10 AUGUST – THE LANSDOWNE, SYDNEY
Ticket info at hightension.com.au
