Urinating Cops

Zach Hill

One day a girl goes psycho and smashes everything in her house and then goes on a badass reign of terror over town, lighting things on fire, jumping on top of cars, carving up fences and spitting in peoples’ faces. Even though it ends with the cops, she’ll never give in. She makes out with her reflection in a dirty mirror to a soundtrack of distorted drums. This is the new video for ‘The Sacto Smile’ by thrash king Zach Hill, featuring a pants-wetting performance by his girlfriend, model Liz Liles. It’s probably the best music video I’ve ever seen. The brain-shattering track comes off Zach’s new album Face Tat, out on October 19 on Sargent House Records, and features contributions from members of No Age, Devendra Banhart, Zach’s bygones collaborator/Tera Melos guitarist Nick Reinhart, Diamond Watch Wrist collaborator/Prefuse 73′s Guillermo Scott Herren, Zach’s Hella bandmate Carson McWhirter and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier. This song is a huge departure from Zach’s considerably more commercial sounding last album Astrological Straits; perhaps touring with Wavves has brought more of a lo-fidelity sound to his consciousness. Regardless, it’s an album to anticipate.

UPDATE: In a statement released today, Zach explains the meaning of the new album’s title as musing on a theory he’d heard that people with facial tattoos potentially have a higher suicide rate than people without facial tattoos. He also says on Face Tat he experiments with destroying sounds “so that the source of the melody, rhythms, vocals, etc, is not recognisable or traceable, and then building these things into abstract forms of pop music with conventional structures.” This includes the sound of urinating on a stack of Rolling Stone magazines, kicking in the screen of a computer, and arguments on the street.