RAUNCHADELIC

LAHNAH’s music video for their song RAUNCHADELIC is bold, garish, and downright weird. It’s also likely to be the most exciting three minutes of your day.

The video begins with a deeply atmospheric scene: a pickup truck idles in a forest clearing at night. Two figures enter the glade from stage right, hastily dragging a body towards the truck bed. The scene is lit with sickly bright lights and ominous dark shadows, resembling the memorable opening of Goodfellas but in acid wash jeans. The music has been rising up to this point and the camera has been entirely stationary, and as the music reaches a crescendo with a definitive roll of the drums, the energy of the video kicks into gear. The body in the back wakes up, restrained in the truck bed as the vehicle careens down an unmade road. The two figures from earlier sit in the front of the truck, jerking around erratically and wearing strange masks that can only be described as looking as if Gumby was part of Slipknot.

Despite the disturbing nature of a nighttime kidnapping by masked assailants, the tone of the video remains playful and silly. The chaotic yet fun vibe is assisted by the gaudy lighting and deliberately over-the-top acting, similar to the curated artifice of the often-maligned and under-appreciated The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. One of the masked men joins the hostage in the back and shaves his face before slathering him in paint. It looks like torture, but yet again director Wes Sterrs keeps it from becoming too upsetting by throwing in gags where the masked men hold up increasingly more absurd tools to use on their victim. By the end of the video, the masked men have released their hostage into an empty arena, having transformed him into a rodeo clown. He stands under an oppressive spotlight with a red nose and a tiny hat, the camera pushing in on his confused face. It’s not exactly clear to the audience why he was abducted and made up, but the feeling of being forcibly taken and put on show in a ridiculous costume is palpable and genuinely uncomfortable.

LAHNAH appear a couple of times in the video, looking confident as a fully formed group with their own distinct brand. They’re expressive and apathetic at the same time; they make the whole thing look very easy. It’s this contradiction that the rest of the video manages to embody effectively. They’re electric and they’re sexy, but they’re not trying too hard to sell that - similarly the video is violent and disturbing, but also disarmingly funny. The video to RAUNCHADELIC is delightfully twisted, and it’s complimented excellently by LAHNAH’s intriguing sound. Sterr’s video presents LAHNAH as a unique group with more to offer than what’s currently in vogue or simple shock value. While RAUNCHADELIC might not be to everyone’s tastes, it will certainly delight and attract those willing to submit to its uncompromising, undiluted attitude.