Exclusive Premiere: Dining with Dogs Channel AmRep Nihilism in “Puzzled”

I don’t know what it is about the state of the world right now — everything sucks? it’s literally burning? we’re all angry? — but I haven’t been able to get enough of AmRep-style noise rock lately. So when “Puzzled,” the latest from Austin outfit Dining with Dogs crossed my inbox, I was instantly hooked by its downtrodden message and appropriately nihilistic animated video.

The lyrics, written for guitarist/vocalist Mark Key’s daughter, are about coming to terms with life’s unrelenting one-way march to death. “Our poor subject wallows in the wreckage and ruin of his wasted life, all while the iridescent cosmicscape of eternity flickers above his head,” the band tells MetalSucks. “If he would just look up, he would be able to take in the beauty of it, before the wondrous void ultimately consumes his brief existence.”

The video was conceptualized and animated by Mark, a real-life photographer by trade, his first fully realized experiment in this style. He collaborated with Walker Anders to draw a 2D emotive face he could animate rhythmically, then filled out the body and rest of the world with 3D elements.

The band is currently holding a raffle to raise money for The Bail Project including some music gear and album packages, while their label, Dirt City, will be donating all of this week’s proceeds as well. That ends this Sunday, so get on it.

The Problem With Friends is out now; order it from the Dirt City webshop or Bandcamp.