[Video] INHEAVEN - Treats

Words: Sam Geary

London's favourite scuzzy grungers INHEAVEN have released their own written, produced, directed - and edited, video for newest single 'Treats'.

The clip, above, directed by bassist Chloe Little - who also takes the lead vocals for the song - features Chloe taking on a new 'role' as an American style cheerleader, pom poms and lots of burn-in-hell fire.

The band describe 'Treats' snd its visuals, thus:

2016 has felt like a strange place to exist in. Living in a world that we didn’t say yes to, whilst the unrepresentative patriarchy becomes more powerful – this is truly terrifying. There are so many disenfranchised, scared, lonely people on this planet, and we are all looking for someone or something to show us a way out of this nightmare. Our generation has been let down in every aspect of what feels like a plutocratic system. Everything about our governing body feels like a lie. Major life-altering decisions were made without us consenting. ‘Treats’ was written in the wake of all of these feelings. This is us expressing our frustration in the only way we know how.

When we decided to make a visual for this song we wanted to create something that felt surrealist, that incorporated elements of Dadaism – we wanted to escape from 2016. We were inspired by many cinematic moments, from Salvador Dali’s dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound to the works of Dario Argento, Brian De Palma, David Lynch and Stephen King. We wanted this video to have the same disorienting feel as some of our favourite cinematic dream sequences; American Beauty and Mulholland Drive being great examples of this.

However, we still wanted to embrace that we are in fact making a three-minute music video – and the idea of directing a heavily choreographed dance section became very appealing. From Pretty in Pink to Pulp Fiction – all the best movies have great dance sequences. As a band we love to juxtapose dark and fuzzy imagery & sounds with the sickly sweet, and Treats feels like a complete representation of this. The demonic cheerleaders encompass all our darkest fears, and what better way to share these on screen than through the medium of dance. They terrorise Chloe who seems to start off as moral and good; she wants to tell them her concerns about the world, but they aren’t listening. She gets dragged into the fire and thinks it’s probably easier to just join them on the dark side than to keep fighting a lost cause.

INHEAVEN are on tour with Blossoms from next week.

November
30 Leicester Academy

December
01 Hull University Union
02 Manchester Albert Hall
03 Manchester Albert Hall
05 Edinburgh Potterow
06 Aberdeen Garage
07 Middlesbrough Empire
11 Oxford Academy
13 London Shepherd’s Bush Empire
14 Bournemouth Old Fire Station