“Masada”: Today is the Day Wrote an Awesome Song About Jewish Mass Suicide

Is Masada a landmark about which everyone already knows, or is it just a Jew thing? In case you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s the quickie Wikipedia version:

Masada (Modern Hebrew מצדה metzadá “fortress”^[1]) is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau (akin to a mesa) on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Herod the Great built palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE. According to Josephus, the Siege of Masada by troops of the Roman Empire towards the end of the First Jewish–Roman War ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels and their families hiding there.

Today, Masada is a tourist attraction, in part because of its historical significance, and in part because it’s gorgeous. Here’s a photo, which I really think doesn’t do it justice:

Why am I talking about Masada? Because it just so happens to be the name of the first single from Today is the Day’s new album, Animal Mother. The track debuted yesterday on Metal Injection via its trippy, David Hall-directed video. Even without the cool-yet-unsettling imagery (this might be Hall’s best work to date), the song totally wrecks; it’s another one of Steve Austin’s mind scientist genre benders, the kind of song which will make you wanna mosh and give you nightmares. If the rest of Animal is this pernicious, we’re in for a real treat.

Check out “Masada” below. Animal Mother comes out October 14 on Southern Lord!

http://youtu.be/rg2hszbaEgw