Watch Big|Brave’s video for “Of This Ilk”

On Friday, Big|Brave will release their new album Vital via Southern Lord. The Montreal drone-metal group have already shared the single “Half Breed,” and today, they’ve released a new video for the fourth track on the album, “Of This Ilk.” The clip, self-directed by the band, is a hazy and out-of-focus clip with some brief close-ups of hands but no faces, and is a commentary on skin bleaching.

Big|Brave’s Robin Wattie says of the new clip in a press release, “This video and song is an ode to those that understand this all too well, all too deeply. There is a silent form of suffering that most do not share. It is a private shame that is very public. The percentage of the global population that take these painstaking, costly efforts in whitening, or rather more aptly, bleaching their skin is higher than a lot would understand, let alone, would ever consider. There is a billion dollar industry in injectables and cream-like products containing harsh and even life-threatening chemicals to lighten, clarify, and whiten one’s skin. This video is an ode to my younger self, and to all the other children, teens and adults of the past, present and future that have used bleach in every way possible, that withdrew from the sun, used clothespins on their nose, scraped their skin raw, buying every product available, in trying every means they can think of to achieve this exclusive coveted lightness, whiteness.”

Vital follows 2019’s A Gaze Among Them.