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Tom Waits – Hell Broke Luce Video

August 9, 2012 by A.S. Van Dorston

Tom Waits released the video for “Hell Broke Luce,” one of the most spittingly angry, political songs from last year’s Bad As Me album. He even drops some f-bombs over a military march cadence. The thesis essentially is that the horrors of wars follow soldiers home, like with Jeff Lucey, who hung himself in his parent’s house after returning from Iraq. With its harsh sounds and surreal, nightmarish imagery, it can be a difficult listen, even terrifying. The video does it justice.

It’s not Waits’ first protest song. In “God’s Away on Business,” from Blood Money (2002), written for an adaptation of the German play Woyzeck, a soldier loses his mind on the edge of poverty. On “Road to Peace” from Orphans (2006), he addresses the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. “And if God is great and God is good / why can’t he change the hearts of men? / Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help.”

The clip was directed by Matt Mahurin, who’s done R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush, Metallica’s “Unforgiven,” and Silversun Pickups’ surrealist “The Royal We,” along with other Waits videos. Mahurin brings his art to the video in the form of shadowy but evocative images, such as nameless war casualties with numbers and snowing ashes. He makes “Hell Broke Luce” even more effective as a protest song. Remember those?

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