The Imbeciles are new to us, but we’re loving the 73 second gem that is One Hand Tommy, and the accompanying surreal animated video featuring a child trapped in a dystopian landscape of nuclear annihilation with only a giant killer snake for company.

It comes from the band’s self-titled debut album – thirteen sub-two minute imploding songs of delirious punk with blood curdling vocals, disarticulated fretwork and wickedly deranged lyricism.

The video is also an homage to Le Ballon Rouge, the classic 1956 French short. In that film a bright red balloon is the only pop of colour in an otherwise grey, morose post-war Paris. Here, the colour is found in Tommy’s red onesie. The video’s nightmarish finale is illuminated by the transcendent light of nuclear holocaust – all part of a mise en scène that echoes everything from Picasso’s Guernica through to the great sci-fi movies of the fifties and sixties.

Watch it. Love it. Get the album here.

Catch them live later in the year – November 2020

12 – London, Shacklewell Arms
13 – Brighton, Green Door Store
14 – Leeds, Royal Park Cellars
15 – Birmingham, The Victoria
17 – Glasgow, Hug & Pint
18 – Tynemouth, Surf Cafe
19 – Manchester, The Talleyrand
20 – Bristol, The Lanes