shame have unveiled the video for brand new track ‘Six-Pack’, the latest single to be taken from their anticipated upcoming third record Food for Worms, out 24th Feb, 2023, via Dead Oceans. Fast-becoming a fan favourite of the band’s recent live sets, ‘Six-Pack’ is shame at their punchiest and most pulsating, and it arrives alongside a video directed by Gilbert Bannerman and animated by Cyrus Hayley.
On the video, featuring a warped reinvention of Napoleon befitting of New Year’s resolution season, Bannerman explained:
“The idea was to make a parody of a middle aged bloke thinking he’s a king for going to the gym once. I read a lot about Napoleon and thought it would be a laugh to make it about him. The style comes from trying to make my youth spent playing PS1 not entirely wasted”.
On ‘Six-Pack’, Charlie Steen, who fronts shame, adds:
“Six pack is essentially the opposite of a Room 101; instead it’s a room where all your wildest desires can come true and will be showered upon you. Be it commodities, self-obsession, foods and B-lister celebrities, it’ll all be there if you want it to. You’ve done time behind bars and now you’re making time in-front of them. It’s time to make up for anything you’ve lost or wasted, it’s time to get it all.”
‘Six-Pack’ follows recently released ‘Fingers of Steel’, and sees shame enter a new, surreal landscape, as reflected in the cover art designed by acclaimed artist Marcel Dzama. It’s suggestive of what is left unsaid, what lies beneath the surface, the farcical and fantastical everyday that we are living in, in a society where both everything and nothing is possible.
On the one hand, new album Food for Worms calls to mind a certain morbidity, but on the other, it’s a celebration of life; the way that, in the end, we need each other. The album is an ode to friendship, and a documentation of the dynamic that only five people who have grown up together – and grown so close, against all odds – can share.
It’s through this, and defiance, that the band have continually moved forward together; finding light in uncomfortable contractions and playing their vulnerabilities as strengths: The near-breakdowns, identity crises, frontman Charlie Steen routinely ripping his top off on stage as a way of tackling his body weight insecurities. Everything is thrown into their live show and the best shows of their lives are happening now.
Now they arrive, finally, at a place of hard-won maturity. Enter: Food for Worms, which Steen declares to be “the Lamborghini of shame records.”
New album Food for Worms out 24th Feb, 2023, via Dead Oceans
https://shame.deadoc.co/food-for-worms
