Skip to content
Premieres

Watch the Thermals’ Blood-Spattered ‘Born to Kill’ Video

The Thermals, "Born to Kill," video

These days a band that isn’t busy being born is busy doing, um, something else. Sleigh Bells, Lana Del Rey, and Titus Andronicus have all flipped the old Bruce Springsteen in recent years and sung about being born to fail — those last two, specifically “to die.” Righteous Portland trio the Thermals are set to release their new album Desperate Ground on April 16 via Saddle Creek Records, and their new video, which premiered today over at Stereogum, hints at what it might be like to be a natural born killer. The self-directed clip for the LP’s scrappy, punk-powered “Born to Kill” shows frontman Hutch Harris as a feral maniac being captured and brutally interrogated. “Blood on my hands,” he sings, with John Darnielle-like reediness, but he might have added “face and clothes.” Crazy with the tomato sauce!