Philly based heavy metal five-piece VEDIC have premiered a music video for “Dehumanized,” taken from the group’s upcoming self-titled EP which drops on March 17th. The video is premiering today via Brave Words. “Dehumanized” is a view on the current condition of our society and it deals with our dependence on social media and technology.
As singer Jason Feinen explains: “In the movies we’ve all heard the expression ‘you’re playing god’ when referring to a villain’s manipulation of humanity and I chose to utilize that accusation to express the meaning of the song lyrically. Throughout history, man has always invented and created in the name of progress and never has there been a positive result without some negative result attached. This song recognizes the impact that our light-speed progression of technology and information is having on our current and future generations. Our need for autonomous response and instant gratification, our sense of entitlement and our wanting for recognition and content has almost ‘mutated’ humanity into something with a perverted sense of self and self-worth; we’ve lost touch with our mortality and our reality. We live and die by convenience and content, content, content and it’s just not a ‘real’ world anymore. I’m in no way against new ideas and new technology, but as this song says ‘you can’t play god without a touch of the devil,’ there’s always going to be an evil with every good.”
The songs on the Vedic EP and most of the material the band has outside the record share an apocalyptic undertone based on humanity’s current social and physical environment and “Dehumanized” is no exception. Feinen elaborates: “We live in an advanced world and the things we have access to now and the things we can do now are amazing, but I feel like there’s so much poison in the water as well. Society sours a lot of life with addiction and greed like a cancer and it’s a shame how much better things should actually be. Everyone knows that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone and it’s seems like people don’t actually see what they ‘have’ in this fast paced era of technology, this planet or this very existence. At some point it all could be gone and we all need to be reminded of that and sometimes we need to hear the warnings and hear the consequences in order to learn from our errors. The lyrics on ‘Dehumanized’ and all of the songs try to provide a warning or scenario or consequence to the listener in hope to inspire that listener to live their life in appreciation of life and recognize who they really are and what the real world is… or at least not be part of the problem.”
About the intentions and experiences that inform the songs on the EP, Feinen says: “I lived the first half of my life in a time with no internet or cell phones, no electric cars, no safe zones, no selfies, no podcasts and it allows me to compare our world with what felt like a much simpler time. All the guys in Vedic lived through that era and I think it’s the connecting tissue beneath all of our music and our relationship as a band. Society almost starts to feel alien when you can look around yourself and think about how different it all used to be. When you start to look at things from the outside, you start to see the errors we all make more clearly and it makes you want to just scream in the face of humanity and change the world. Our songs bring awareness to what kind of world we’re living in today through pontifications of doom, judgement, regret and penance and that comes from understanding how far the world has come, how much it has changed and where it could be headed if we don’t all do away with the bullshit and start appreciating life.”
VEDIC has come together in 2018 with the intent of bringing contemporary heavy music to a new level of uncompromising intensity and professionalism, without sacrificing the important element of great song writing. The songs created by VEDIC are not easy to play but are very easy to listen to, with compositions slamming through the boundaries of the genre and forcing the listener to take notice of the beauty and brutality they possess. Crushing guitars, bass and drums create layers of monstrous grooves sitting on your chest with hooks that tie you up and hold you down, in your face where you want it and where it belongs. No one walks away from a song that VEDIC plays whether at a show or on your CD player. VEDIC could also be considered the musical equivalent of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde with frequent indulgences in quiet, serene acoustic moments that showcase yet another of the multi-faceted abilities of the band.
