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Jul 28, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Sheridan Lee

Los Angeles-based rock trio Meatbodies are releasing a new album, 333, on September 3 via In the Red. Now they have shared its second single, “The Hero,” via a video for it. Watch it below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Casey Hanson directed the video and had this to say in a press release: “The video and song are an exercise in sarcasm. Further it’s maybe a jaded/cynical expression in regards to the good-evil duality narrative fed to us by people—idealizing machines of war, fetishizing trauma. It’s also just pretty colors and wrestling heel antics.”

Previously the band shared its first single, the bass-heavy shoegaze cut “Reach For the Sunn,” via a video for it. “Reach For the Sunn” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Meatbodies is led by Chad Ubovich, who has also performed with Fuzz and in Mikal Cronin’s backing band. After the band’s second album, 2017’s Alice, Ubovich was a bit burnt out.

“I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn’t do it anymore,” he says in a press release. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn’t feel right, and I went down a dark path.”

But eventually Ubovich found his way back to Meatbodies, alongside drummer Dylan Fujioka, and a new album was finished by late 2019. But then COVID-19 hit, putting its release on hold. In lockdown, Ubovich revisited some demos he and Fujioka had recorded in 2018 that he says “sounded gross, like a scary Magical Mystery Tour.” Enamored by the demos’ “deliriously disordered” nature, Ubovich turned those into Meatbodies’ third album instead.

Meatbodies Tour Dates:

09/02: El Cid - Los Angeles, CA
09/03: The Observatory - Santa Ana, CA
09/04: Soda Bar - San Diego, CA
09/07: Knitting Factory - Brooklyn, NY
09/08: Ottobar - Baltimore, MD
09/09: Grog Shop - Cleveland, OH
09/10: The Brass Rail - Fort Wayne, IN
09/11: EXPANSION - Lexington, KY
09/17-18: Lose Yr Mind - Portland, OR
09/19: The Crocodile - Seattle, WA
09/20: Karate Church - Bellingham, WA
09/22-23: Treefort Music Festival - Boise, ID
09/25: The Ivy Room - Oakland, CA

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