Emo / indie rockers from TWIABPAIANLATD have released an amazing video for their new beautiful, touching song “January 10th, 2014”, coming from the album ‘Harmlessness,’ available September 25th via Epitaph Records! Read the introductory story by NPR magazine and watch the video below.
The band commented:
“January 10th, 2014” is about retaliation against predators. The character in the song, Diana, is based on the story of a woman from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico who avenged unprosecuted and largely ignored sexual assaults being committed by bus drivers on their routes. The video replaces the real life Diana with Dianic Wiccans who protect themselves using hexesand their own spirituality. The male character in the video is a predator, and therefore must be destroyed.
NPR magazine explained further:
According to witnesses, on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013, a woman hailed the 4A bus in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When the male bus driver opened the doors to let her on, she shot and killed him. The following day, on the same route, she murdered another driver. That weekend, media outlets received letters from a woman calling herself “Diana, the hunter of bus drivers,” claiming responsibility for the murders and declaring them acts of revenge in the face of the city’s staggering rates of femicide. Her eponym is Diana (or Artemis, in the Roman tradition), the ancient Greek goddess of wilderness, childbirth, animals and the hunt.
On Jan. 10, 2014, The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, an emo band from Connecticut, wrote a song about the incidents. Drawing its lyrics from an episode of This American Life telling the story, and from research about Dianic belief (a neopagan religion centered on Diana), “January 10th, 2014” is grandiose and dramatic — and that’s not even taking into account the video.
The Diana namesake in Ciudad Juárez targeted bus drivers because many of the women killed in the city were riding buses alone when they were attacked, and it’s that scenario that TWIABP uses as a starting point in their video. What follows is an epic, nearly six-minute tale of murder and revenge, amped up by crashing drums and climbing guitar. The problems of Ciudad Juárez were not solved by a lone vigilante, and they aren’t solved by a music video dramatizing her. But as this band’s response to a true — and truly devastating — story, and a piece of graphic, pyrotechnic, searing art, “January 10th, 2014” is breathtaking. / NPR
Lyrics:
Ease the babies out of their wombs. Make your hair blonde, hop on the number four. Do you become the driver when they drop you off? I’ll become the driver. You don’t take their money, ripping out their roots. They found two heads hollowed out in the sanctuary or on the dry roadside. This is a duel and she won. Congratulate her, send her thanks. “How great that someone’s doing what many of us should have done.” Put up a statue of the new killer out of chains in the waxing moon. Do you see my shadow off the stake? Are you Diana, the Hunter? Are you afraid of me now? Well, yeah. Shouldn’t I be? But, don’t you quiver. I am an instrument. I am revenge. I am several women. Follow the arrow from behind the line. Moving forward, the night begins. We are brave and strong, but you don’t quiver. Let’s write this down, together. Our hands on the same weapon. Make evil afraid of evil’s shadow
