There is a morbid poetry to repetition, a grim comfort to knowing exactly how the next hurt will land. S.C.A.B. confront that truth in their unsettling new video which follows frontman Sean Camargo and a friend through a story that refuses neat endings. The narrative is simple and terrible: an accidental death, a remorseful resurrection, and a violent mirror that returns the debt in full. What begins as a confession becomes a loop where victim and monster trade places until the pattern completes itself.

Directed by Sampson Dahl the video leans into gothic fairytale imagery and body horror to interrogate cycles of betrayal and the difficulty of breaking them. Dahl sees the story as less about punishment and more about persistence.

The inevitable cycle of love and loss finds us all he says often simultaneously playing the victim and the monster. Despite efforts to absolve ourselves pain and yearning still plot their course trotting down familiar paths uprooting traits and responses we may have otherwise wished laid dormant. Whether passion dwindles to a gentle halt or one commits a truly egregious act there is no medicine for a broken bond and if there is a renaissance the patterns still remain. By my understanding it is only the color of those patterns we can mitigate.

The video is a bold statement from S.C.A.B. It refuses easy moralizing and instead offers a bleak, compassionate look at how we repeat what we fear most. For anyone who has tried and failed to break a pattern the film will sting and resonate in equal measure.