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Belgian alternative act STAKE reveals the bleak, post-apocalyptic and Mad Max Inspired new video for ‘Deadlock Eyes’. The track is taken from the band’s new album LOVE, DEATH and DECAY which is set for release on the 30th of September 2022 via Hassle Records. Fans can pre-order the album HERE.
Written in the heart of the lockdown, ‘Deadlock Eyes’ reflects on the band’s collective sense of bleakness and despair around an unprecedented global experience.
Vocalist/guitarist Brent Vanneste comments on the band’s latest offering and their video collaboration with Ghost, a creative hub of artists and engineers and The Mutoid Waste Company, who are a performance art group founded in London in the early 1980s and refer to themselves as The Mutoids.
“Deadlock eyes was written in the heart of the lockdown when we were feeling stuck with no light at the end of the tunnel. The heaviness of the riffs we came up with at that time reflected this perfectly.” Vanneste recounts.
“Last Summer we were invited by Ghost to infiltrate Mutonia, Santarcangelo Di Romagna in Italy. Together with a nest of artists and The Mutoids themselves, we spent a week working on a big show that the whole village could attend.” Vanneste explains. “Our new video is one of the results of this exceptional creative excursion. We were completely in the mood while being immersed in this absurd Mad Max bubble. ‘Deadlock Eyes’ was the perfect soundtrack for this exceptional trip to Mutonia. Thank you Ghost for this opportunity! Video by Ghost, Jeroen De Wilde and the Mutoids.”
CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO CHECK OUT ‘DEADLOCK EYES’
MORE ON LOVE, DEATH and DECAY
Brent Vanneste knows that love never dies. Mysteries of the heart, and those of the great hereafter, have rarely been far from the Stake frontman’s busy, offbeat brain. Never broken by the weight of grief or existential dread, however, he uses those feelings as fuel for a musical fire that’s as boldly unconventional as it is bracingly alive. “This band is about all my inner darkness and demons, and finding a peaceful place in my head,” he grapples, preferring his songs to do the talking. “I’m not going to be able to erase them, but making music is a great way of arranging them and surviving this crazy life.”
That process began when he was just 13 years old. Forming Steak Number Eight in honour of his recently deceased brother Thobias Vanbrabant, Brent channelled the most aching personal tragedy into their first four albums, making the whole European rock scene sit up and take notice. The band’s 2018 rebrand (accompanying fifth album Critical Method) concluded this “mourning process” by moving away from that unwieldy original name, and the last few years have proven that you can never really leave these things behind. The band’s latest offering LOVE, DEATH and DECAY is a testament to that.
Guitarist Cis Deman is, by his own admission, far more of a cold realist than his frontman. The one-time funeral director is a dark foil to Brent’s flightier tendencies, and the contrast between their mindsets is key to the shape-shifting mood and captivating desolation of Stake’s brilliant new album.
Where Brent is more fixated on “love and death”, Cis explains frankly, his fascination lies in “death and decay.” The singer reflects on the meaning of the album title. On the evening his girlfriend’s aunt was dying, he watched the excellent Netflix documentary Fantastic Funghi. He was inspired by the fact that all matter is recycled into new life. Cis, contrastingly, unearths a far harsher recollection. Faced with the pandemic, he initially needed to counterpoint the pervasive misery with brighter sounds, but the loss of two of his cousins –brothers, the first lost to suicide, the second struck by a bus– meant that stepping into darkness felt unavoidable. “I realised I just couldn’t write anything happy,” he shrugs. “The themes of love and death aren’t always spoken about out loud, but they’re always there. For me, they’ve never felt as close as they do on this record.”
As the world steps back into the sun after two years of darkness, the isolation and pain of these songs should be held close as a reminder of the struggle we’ve come through, and why it’s important to embrace every day as it comes.
“Everybody dies,” Cis smiles, leaving off with characteristic bluntness. “So make the best of being alive. Stop being an aggressor in traffic. Just drive…”
Be sure to catch STAKE on tour across the UK/EU with Cave In this autumn. A full list of dates can be found below. Tickets and more information can be found HERE.
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LOVE, DEATH and DECAY TRACKLISTING
1 Love, Death and Decay
2 Deliverance Dance
3 Zone Out
4 F*ck My Anxiety
5 Queen in the Dirt
6 Deadlock Eyes
7 Ray of the Sun
8 Dream City
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STAKE TOUR DATES
08.09 Volt, Sittard
10.09 Hellseatic 2022 Bremen
15.09 Merlyn, Nijmegen
16.09 Neushoorn, Leeuwarden
15.10 Junkyard Dortmund (w. Cave In)
16.10 Lido Berlin (w. Cave In)
17.10 Kesselhaus Wiesbaden (w. Cave In)
19.10 Badaboom Paris (w. Cave In)
20.10 Le Poche Bethune (w. Cave In)
24.10 Heaven London (w. Cave In)
25.10 The Exchange Bristol (w. Cave In)
26.10 Gorilla, Manchester (w. Cave In)
27.10 Room 2, Glasgow (w. Cave In)
05.11 Belvédère Namen
16.11 Reflektor Luik
03.12 Wilde Westen Festival, Kortrijk
11.12 WMD, Waregem
17.12 Trix, Antwerp
LOVE, DEATH and DECAY is set for release on the 30th of September 2022 via Hassle Records. Pre-order HERE.
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STAKE:
Brent Vanneste – vocals/guitars / Cis Deman – guitars / Jesse Surmont – bass guitar / Joris Casier – drums
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