FORBIDDEN Releases Music Video For Second New Song In 15 Years, 'Mutually Assured Dysfunction'
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Reactivated San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal veterans FORBIDDEN have released the official Mike Sloat-directed music video for their second new song in over 15 years, "Mutually Assured Dysfunction". "Mutually Assured Dysfunction" and "Divided By Zero", which was made available in late June, mark the band's first recordings with FORBIDDEN's current lineup, consisting of founding guitarist Craig Locicero, alongside longtime bassist Matt Camacho and the group's latest additions, singer Norman Skinner and drummer Chris Kontos, plus VOIVOD guitarist Daniel "Chewy" Mongrain, who stepped in as a replacement for Steve Smyth in July 2024.
FORBIDDEN comments: "'Mutually Assured Dysfunction' is our aggressive follow-up to 'Divided By Zero'. Like a crack to the skull, it lands hard. It's about the DNA of endless arguments that people engage in. Sound bites over substance. This rationale is based upon the M.A.D. agreement of Rational Actors: A doctrine that assumes world leaders will be rational and self-preserving. Therefore, they will avoid any actions that would lead to their own country's demise. This leap of faith leads to the kind of dysfunction that will ultimately lead to our destruction as a species."
At this past summer's Motocultor Festival in France, Locicero was asked by Loud TV what it's like for him and his FORBIDDEN bandmates to play thrash metal in 2025, since the music industry has changed a lot in the past four decades. He responded: "Yeah, yeah. Well, like that's ever mattered to us. Yeah, it's never really mattered to us. There was a time in the early '90s where it killed everything. I think now thrash has a very permanent home because kids keep rediscovering it. And it goes along with my philosophy of the way I record music now, too. If you go back and you look at the history of thrash records, people wanna listen to the old stuff, and there's a reason for that, because it wasn't too perfect, it wasn't too clean, it wasn't manipulated by digital. Everything was so natural. So with the way we recorded, even though we recorded digitally, we didn't fix everything. We laid a good drum track down, we laid a quick guitar track, quick guitar track, quick bass track — bang, bang, bang, bang. And so when you do things like that, the result is people feel that there's more energy coming from that because there's — I call it hair. There's hair in it. I like hair. I like albums that sound perfect, I like really clinical metal records that are supposedly industry standard, but I don't think they last as long in the fans' hearts and minds. And that is being proven over the years, 'cause people just wanna go back and listen to old shit. You've gotta have the balls to do it, and we're doing it."
Craig continued: "Another thing we did, too, is we recorded everything in [the standard guitar tuning of] E — not the whole album, but most of it tuned up, the way we used to tune. And you'll probably find two or three bands in this whole festival that are tuned high like [that]. You can play Chuck Berry and Elvis [Presley] and FORBIDDEN — and old SLAYER. We all used to be in E. If you can't write heavy shit in E, then I don't know what to tell you."
When "Divided By Zero" was first released, FORBIDDEN commented in a statement: "The opening riff for 'Divided By Zero' was the first thing Craig brought to the table as a new FORBIDDEN song. The lyrics address the erosion of civility and society through divisive control of institutions, cultures, religion, and government. Without picking sides, 'Divided By Zero' points to anyone and everyone that partakes in this mass manipulation, willingly or unwittingly."
The band added: "The video for 'Divided By Zero' is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, depicting how influential words and propaganda of the few have power to sway the many. Robots and monsters — how most of us unwittingly end up being one or the other through the multiple institutions' relentless brainwashing and beating us down. All of the disturbing imagery, created by Ethan Renoe at Crumb Hill, visually captures the story perfectly, haunting, powerful, and poignant."
"Mutually Assured Dysfunction" and "Divided By Zero" represent the bridge between classic and modern FORBIDDEN. They were recorded similarly to FORBIDDEN's debut album, 1988's "Forbidden Evil", in approach: no samples, no triggers and no over-editing.
FORBIDDEN's new songs were recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California with engineer/co-producer Zack Ohren.
(Source: www.blabbermouth.net)
