Tom Morello has unleashed an immense new video for 'Every Step That I Take' featuring Portugal The Man. Refreshingly, it feels less of a plug for the album but a heartfelt ode to his hero Joe Hill - a heroic man described by the Rage guitarist as a "Revolutionary labour troubadour."
In fact, the whole of Morello's solo album The Atlas Underground is heavily inspired by the story of Joe Hill. Asked by Virgin Radio's Eddie Temple at an album playback in September last year, what the lyrical thread running through the album is, and Morello answered: "Social justice ghost stories’. It’s the idea that the fallen heroes and martyrs that have passed the undeemed and unnumbered, who have been killed by injustice, find voice through these songs."
Indeed, Joe Hill, who inspired countless musicians including Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Springsteen, and novelist Steinbeck, is the epitome of a fallen hero.
"Hill was a member of the industrial workers of the world, a freedom fighter, and a poet laureate of the United States Working Class in the early 20th Century. He was executed because of his beliefs; because he took his convictions and put them in his vocation as a singer and a guitar player, and they killed him for it."(Tom Morello).
The part of the Joe Hill story that is most explicitly told in the below streaming video - which was created on a 3-D scanner - is his death by firing squad.
Morello recalled this story at the album playback: "Revolutionary labour troubadour Joe Hill was murdered by a Utah firing squad for a crime he did not commit. They pinned a heart and crosshairs to his chest so the firing squad wouldn’t miss. His ashes were mailed to the four corners of the world and from those ashes generations of new revolutionaries continue to rise. ‘The Atlas Underground’ sprang from those ashes as well and is proof that ideas, songs and struggle are bulletproof"
Having this new video is the most stark, blatant way to convey the story and truly breathes new life into the album for the listener. Moreover, it also goes a long way in being a reminder of one of the influences that's attributed Tom Morello's lifelong nobly stirred humanist perspective in facing injustice such as war and racism.
Watch the video, which was directed by Sean Evans below :
Evans the creator had this to say to press:
“I started messing around with 3-D scanning end of last year because, as it turned out, I was walking around with a 3-D scanner, my freaking iPhone! Using it gave insane results, this broken technology vibe, it seemed like a perfect look to create a world out of for ‘Every Step That I Take’, though it proved to be quite an undertaking. Worth it in the end!”
Discover more about Atlas Underground in this Gigwise re-cap of the album playback, brief performance, and interview with Eddie Temple.
