Bat—which features guitarists Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos of Municipal Waste as well as drummer Chris Marshall—recently announced the upcoming release of their second LP Under the Crooked Claw which will be out on May 17 via Nuclear Blast Records. Alongside the announcement of the new album, the band released the video for the song “Rite for Exorcism” which was directed by Norman Cabrera, produced by Maya Kay, with cinematography by Rob Lucas at Wolfpack Studios.
The video is a tribute to ‘70s horror movies, with a particular emphasis on the 1973 William Friedkin classic film The Exorcist. You can almost hear Linda Blair shouting “Your mother sews socks that smell” or whatever the line from the movie was. In a statement reported on by Metal Injection, Ryan Waste has this to say about the new record and video:
“This record came together during dark times and its aggression is surely a reflection of that. Nick, Chris, and I hammered out song after song in a grimy, mold-ridden warehouse, turning our anger at the state of the world into what became ‘Under the Crooked Claw’. To set the tone for the album, I called upon legendary Italian horror maestro Fabio Frizzi to compose an intro, just before Bat’s raw force assaults your ears.
“While simultaneously working on a heavy metal horror script with Norman Cabrera, I shared some of the new Bat songs with him. With our shared taste in film and vision, we devised two video concepts for the upcoming record based on my lyrics. The first offering is our twist on a tale of an exorcism gone awry, that Norman completely nailed to the cross.”
