watch All Them Witches' "Rats In Ruin" video staring & co-directed by Drea de Matteo
Nashville’s All Them Witches recently released their sixth album, Nothing is the Ideal, which they made at Abbey Road studios and finds them further exploring the darker side of stoner riff rock. If you haven’t given the album a spin you can listen below.
The band have just made a video for the album’s atmospheric, nine-minute closing track, “Rats in Ruin.” It was co-directed by drummer Robby Staebler and actress Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy) and they both star in it as well. (They are a couple in real life.) “Before we recorded Nothing As The Ideal I knew I wanted to do a visual for RATS,” Robby tells us. “The Tape demo that was stuck on repeat in my head was fully realized at Abbey Road. After the London session, all of us split ways to three different parts of the country right when the world shut down. Tucked away overlooking Los Angeles, Drea and I decided to put our heads together for this project.”
Stuck in quarantine, they brainstormed shots and characters, which Robby said he’d never done before for a video. “I’ve always approached filming videos for the band as I do shooting still images – focusing on shapes, compositions, colors and tricks to pull a subconscious story from. This was totally different,” says Robby. “Drea outlined a linear story that we worked out together before any film was loaded. Completely out of my comfort zone. I’ve also never worked on a slow song before, so the challenges for me were front and center. The heaviness of the world situation mixed with the seriousness of the story really took a toll after countless hours editing. The lines between storytelling and real life became blurred. In all the darkness we somehow managed to find moments of light. This film is overflowing with layered juxtapositions and messages that people will need to examine more than once to digest.”
As to what it’s about, Robby goes on to tell us, “‘Rats’ is a continuation of last year’s ‘1×1′ project where Drea is pulled from the ground to give life in a time of turmoil. She was Mother Earth reincarnated. In ‘Rats,’ we introduce the images of mankind and the future. I am mankind, Drea’s son Blackjack is our creation… the future, and Drea is the life force of the planet, nature, Mother Earth. As mankind turns his back on his creation, he looks outwards for something new, leaving the work at hand unfinished and dismissed…The family is a microcosm for our world and society. Our root systems are being torn from the ground and sold back to us as mulch. We continue to dismantle nature to feed our progression towards extinction. Instead of cultivating the earth and ourselves through love and balance we neglect the seeds sown and ignite our world. Will we keep burning this to the ground? No air no life. No love no life. When the dust settles what will be left? RATS IN RUIN.”
The video is really something, and it makes its premiere in this post. You can watch below.
Drea De Matteo was recently a guest on Fucked up frontman Damian Abraham’s Turned Out a Punk podcast and she talks about All Them Witches, hanging out at East Village punk club Coney Island High in the 1990s, and lots more. (Her Sopranos co-star Michael Imperioli was recently a guest, too). You can listen to that below as well. She’s also hosts the Gangster Goddess Broad-Cast podcast, where she talks about The Sopranos and lots more and which Robby wrote the theme song for.
