Animals as Leaders Drop First New Song in Five Years, “Monomyth,” With Striking Video

Well, that was friggin’ quick: just a couple of weeks after announcing they’d tracked the final note of their new album, Animals as Leaders, unquestionably one of metal’s most singular and creative acts, have unveiled that album’s first single, “Monomyth.”

What’s more, it arrives with a video which itself is a genre-defying piece of art. The clip features an elaborate, synchronized, choreographed, interpretive dance routine with a group of bald, topless men in black skirts, their bodies painted white, doing essentially what I do when I rock out alone and no one’s looking. Except way, way better! It’s not what you expect from a metal video, and that’s a good thing. Props to director Telavaya Reynolds, choreographer Tlathui Maza, and, of course, the band for having this idea.

As for the song, you more or less know what to expect from Animals as Leaders, and to that end it sounds like them… except this is Animals as Leaders we’re talking about, and there are always curveballs.

Tosin Abasi shares:

“‘Monomyth’ is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man’s ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement. The conflation of struggle with meaning. Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns inthe world into knowledge.

No word yet on an album name or release date, but we do know that Abasi’s old partner in crime Misha Mansoor (Periphery) returned for production duties on this one. Stay tuned.

Animals as Leaders recently dropped off their planned tour with Dance Gavin Dance, Veil of Maya and other bands. No reason was given other than “unforeseen circumstances.”