See It First: Foo Fighter Nate Mendel’s Project, Lieutenant, Debuts ‘Believe the Squalor’
Nate Mendel, one of the original Foo Fighters as well as bassist for a variety of cool bands including Sunny Day Real Estate, has released a new album, I Kill This Thing We’re All Going To Eat For A Week, under the moniker Lieutenant and came out earlier this year.
Fans of Lieutenant will be sure to dig the video for the tune “Believe the Squalor,” which Yahoo Music is excited to premiere. The clip is a completely over-the-top, comically sacrilegious metal take on a gorgeously heartfelt and melodic song – which makes it pretty hilarious!
The track itself features the guitar work of Page Hamilton (Helmet) and vocals from Josiah Johnson (Head and the Heart) but is played out in the video by Pete Majors and Sandor G.F. of Harrasor, Erik Kluiber of Ironaut on bass and bandmate Eli Santana, also of Holy Grail.
Mendel had this to say about the making of the video: “I was in the process of putting a band together to tour as Lieutenant, and was in that brackish zone between a solo project and a band, when this idea came up. Because I didn’t know what the identity of the band would ultimately be, I thought why not play that out by creating a performance video using the 100% incorrect musicians, in this case a black metal band?
"I texted the idea to a friend of mine, Jim Rota, who was a producer on the Sonic Highways project, and also fronts a metal band, for his input, and his response was to send me a photo of his friend Pete Majors covered in stage blood, on stage with his band Harassor. At that point I thought the idea could come together, and that Pete should definitely be a part of it, if we could convince him to lip sync to the song. I’d met Pete at a party a few months before, and knew he had a Fire Theft tattoo, so I thought there may be a chance he’d go for it.
"We then asked Matt Kubas to help out, a talented cinematographer who also worked on the show, and he and Jim came up with some ideas that I wouldn’t have thought were near to possible on the small budget I had to work with, and that’s when the idea mutated from just an odd performance video into a full-on campy horror movie."
For more information on Lieutenant or to keep up with Mendel’s schedule, check here.
