John Maus returns with a new single and music video: ‘I Hate Antichrist,’ his first new music in 7-years, which arrives via his new label home YOUNG. Built around a rhythm that feels both ritualistic and futuristic, ‘I Hate Antichrist’ is a spiritual confrontation – part protest, part prayer, part digital exorcism. Delivered with Maus’ distinctive raw conviction, repetition of the titular phrase becomes more like a mantra than a lyric – its meaning deepening through sheer exertion and duration.
Speaking about the track, Maus says: “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time a claim is made to realize, within history, that messianic hope which can only be fulfilled beyond history through the eschatological judgment.”
The animated music video, directed by Andrew Norman Wilson, is a surreal and haunting visual depiction of the loop of self-devouring destruction caused by contemporary antichrists. In the video a group of false saviors – tech moguls, corrupt bishops, politicians, war-mongering-military and media influencers – succumb to the relentless churn of vanity and brutality. The characters are not just villains but also symbols of a world trapped in its own sickness on the verge of collapse. In contrast, the song is an act of rejection and resistance, a call for meaningful transcendence. A throwback to Maus’s essay Theses on Punk and the 2011 track ‘Cop Killer,’ off Pitiless, a metaphorical call to arms, a challenge to both fight the powers that be and kill the cop in our own heads.
A 21st-century philosopher-musician, Maus has earned a mythic reputation for his fierce belief in the emotional weight of sound, eccentric interpretations of pop and baroque, and legendary, cathartic live shows which reveal the “hysterical body”. Embracing imperfection and emotional rawness, Maus’ live performances are acts of radical embodiment, leaning into a kind of postmodern sincerity that has grown more vital in a culture trapped in irony and apathy.
Stream / download ‘I Hate Antichrist’ here.
