Premiere: Carrie Nation and the Speakeasy pay homage to Ingmar Bergman with their new video

Carrie Nation & The Speakeasy. // photo courtesy the artist

Tomorrow, February 2, long-running Wichita thrashgrass quintet Carrie Nation & The Speakeasy drop the vinyl edition of their new EP, Logos. To celebrate, we’ve got the premiere of a new music video which features two tracks, “Soot Follows Cinder” and “Antonius Block’s Confession,” the first two singles from the Logos EP.

The songs serve as the two acts of the video, with the sonic and visual aesthetic linking their disparate themes.

Band co-founder and vocalist Jarrod Starling wrote up something about the video for us, and these new tunes get deep, friends. Check it out after watching the video below.

“‘Soot Follows Cinder’ is a death’s-eye-view of the organic carbon cycle. The song travels from lightning to fire. Fire to ash. Ash to air. It is a fast-paced and frenetic push-and-pull through epochs to illuminate the parallels between social and natural cycles.

The video features scenes that alternate between the morbid and the joyous. Images of death incarnate and deceased band members are punctuated by well-lit group shots of the performing band, who themselves are dissociated from “life” performing in a featureless expanse of darkness. The black-and-white production of the video mimics this dichotomy.

‘Antonius Block’s Confession’ is a song written about a scene in Ingmar Berman’s The Seventh Seal. It begins with hushed, undulating guitar and drums that provide background to sparse, contemplative lyrics in verse 1. The chorus gives way to triumphant harmonies that dive into dark driving rhythms. The movie scene it depicts examines the futility of faith in the face of finality. It shows a knight dragging himself into a confessional to discuss faith and fate with the unseen priest. His crisis is immediate, and he is searching for answers. But, alas, there is no priest, no interlocutor between mortal and divine, no divine, no answers. Only death.

Logos album cover. // credit Joshua Finley

Act II of this video pays homage to this great scene with some referential shots and striking black-and-white images. The video features the knight’s encounter with death and references the subsequent confessional scene. Footage of trees and overgrown headstones contrast with dark, artfully framed interior shots of a surreal confessional. The individual and group shots of the band performing at break-neck speed compliment the dramatic and contemplative tone of the shots.

This video was shot June 30-July 2, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri. It was directed by Chad Crenshaw and edited by Davis DeRock. Storyboards by Frank Coronado. Jeff Fuller provided post-production. It features Samuel P. Espinoza as Antonius block. Both songs were written by Jarrod Starling and performed by Carrie Nation & The Speakeasy.”