Images of cell mitosis, swarming bees, and something that could be either a crosswalk or an orgy of organisms — the video for How to Destroy Angels’ “The Loop Closes” has the intensity of a visual countdown to the apocalypse, viewed through the dispassionate eye of city surveillance.
With the neon-soaked color scheme of a Philip K. Dick or William Gibson future, videos loop over a pounding fuzz of industrial noise and chiptune blips. The whole thing could be playing out on the screen of a traffic light, with pixels the size of thumbnails distorting images into an idea of objects. It’s an overwhelming feeling, so much so that when the dark, repetitious vocals of Trent Reznor and Mariqueen Maandig arrive nearly three minutes into the song, they relieve some of the tension.
As things fade to black, the beat is the last thing to go, a hint that the loop, and the song, could easily reopen.