Three weeks prior to the highly anticipated release of their new album “Derramar | Querer | Borrar” on Zegema Beach Records, New Jersey screamo act MASSA NERA joins us for a special first hearing of their new single “Adrift”, along with the official DIY video above! The song marks the second single from the album, fitting the previously released “April 7th” (also available below), and the video is a unique tribute to screamo and DIY punk, and an interesting take on being burdened by the ghosts of a past. Check it out and scroll down for detailed explanation from the band.
“Derramar | Querer | Borrar” comes five years after the band’s previous full length offering “Los Pensamientos De Una Cara Palida” and three to five years after their split collaborations with Infant Island, Frail Body, Dianacrawls, thisismenotthinkingofyou, Yo Sbraito, and EF’IL, and their contribution to the Envy/Love Tribute record, released by Zegema Beach Records in December 2018.
The album is co-produced with Saetia/Off Minor’s Steve Roche (check out our interview with Steve HERE).
Drummer Mark Boulanger had this to say about the album and the new song: ““During Derramar | Querer | Borrar’s writing process, everyone in the band, at one time or another, found themselves floundering in a demoralizing job. The kind of job that has little to offer in the way of positive growth or change, but nevertheless stakes a monopoly on your time and energy, even after the workday has ended. The kind of job that causes so much stress and despair, you find yourself questioning why you bother to get out of bed.”
“Jobs like this become even more difficult to manage, I think, when you’ve already established a political ideology that not only opposes capitalism, but stresses the artificiality of capitalism as a system. If your worldview is resolutely anti-capitalist, how do you continue giving everything you have to a meaningless job?”
“For me, it’s kind of like peering behind the curtain, taking stock of everything you see, and then going on as if nothing happened. I think the dissonance that results from this gulf between belief and action sometimes leads to rationalization, especially when you’re dependent on your job for survival and feel too powerless to affect any sort of change. I’ve certainly been there. ‘You know, this job could be a lot worse! Maybe if I put my head down and work hard, I’ll get that promotion / things will ease up in a few weeks / my boss will become more fair…’ etc. etc. Of course, nothing changes.”
“Work doesn’t improve. Your mental health doesn’t improve. You don’t feel any less alone. And time keeps slipping away”.
Expounding more on the new music video, Mark say that on one level, this video is a small tribute to screamo (and, more broadly, DIY punk).
“This scene has meant so much to us for such a long time, to the point that most of our meaningful relationships exist because of it.” – they say. “We felt like these video collages were a way of honoring that. The collages feature a mixture of “classic” and contemporary bands. Placing those clips alongside each other was our way of asserting the “worthiness” of the bands that are coming up now, for lack of a better word. Contemporary screamo bands deserve to be placed right alongside the ones that came before. Admittedly, most of the featured contemporary bands are ones that we know personally. This video, then, is also a way for us to honor our friends! On that note, we also included a couple non-screamo musicians who are in some way near and dear to the band.”
Nevertheless, that’s not what the video is really ‘about.’
“For us, it’s about being burdened by the ghosts of a past that has been rendered discontinuous with the present.” – explain Mark. “The past isn’t really past, of course, but when it’s treated like a discreet, flattened thing that exists “back then,” useful only in the ways it can be mined for profit, it leaves the present ripe for haunting.”
“For me, that describes life under capitalism on both macro and micro levels. For example, how many people have jobs that allow for the healthy integration of their past and present selves? Most jobs, I’d argue, demand renunciation instead. Your own past, then, becomes some unsettled thing that exists “back then.” That’s who the person in this video represents: someone haunted by their own unsettled past” – they conclude.
“Adrift” lyrics:
Burnt out and dreamless
Alone and unkempt
Entombed in bloodless flesh
Contorted in masculine pose
Talking in circles
Worked to the bone
Sleepless in the aisles
Drifting through a sea of false memories
(staring / haunting / wanting / drowning)
until I clock out
and realize I’m 30 years older
With no forward motion
decay marks the passage of time
And so it seems that this is all there is
Lost faces, stolen moments
But maybe I deserve this
Maybe I deserve this
Maybe I’m nothing but
the weight of my work
If I dig a little deeper
I might just be able to turn this around
Why do I believe compliance will save me?
None of this is real
See me through my own eyes
“Derramar | Querer | Borrar” tracklist:
01 “An Endless Cycle // I Was More Than the Weight of My Work”
02 “Hipócrita”
03 “Lost Faces”
04 “Adrift”
05 “Shapeshift”
06 “April 7th”
07 “A Faint Goodbye”
08 “Tristeza Consume (Lowering The Blinds)”
09 “Eyeless Faces”
10 “Wanting (Ghosts Haunting Ghosts)”
11 “You Mean So Much More Than Misery To Me”
12 “Anchored”
