Photo by Miles Kalchik

“I saw an ad online/ With a man in his prime / ‘You can change your life / For a limited time’,” talk-sings Stuck frontman Greg Orbis in its opening moments of “Instakill”. Targeted ads, influencers, and pretty much anyone promoting anything under the guise of unlocking a knowledge being kept from you — on the Internet, everything is a grift. The lead single from the Chicago post-punk band’s new album, Optimizer, is self-aware of this even as it scrapes through the noise with its hyperactive livewire of jarring riffs and overloaded neuron receptors. Whenever everything you’re subjected to nowadays promises to maximize the self, it’s good to hear someone doing the real work in untangling one the many, many reasons why the concept of the world wide web and its extended social media networks have proved to be nothing but a huge mistake in making everyone worse for it.

Directed by: Zack Shorrosh

Stuck’s Optimizer will be released March 27th on Exploding In Sound Records.