Highly Suspect's Tense '16' Video Bathes Terrible Johnny In Golden Light

The state of rock music is evergreen fodder for both folks who still love and defend a good guitar crunch and those who have essentially OK Boomer'd the complete genre into a long overdue grave. Rock, as it turns out, is still very much alive, also it in an educated manner and necessarily keeps mutating. Massachusetts musical group Highly Suspect have made a career out of rock preservationism, and their latest single "16" sounds very right now, while still infused by their beginnings as a bar musical group covering Sublime, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd.


The video, although, paints the musical group as visual storytellers unafraid to deliver a unique vision. It's not really a wild ride up until it very suddenly is.


The setup is simple: Vocalist Johnny Stevens, a.K.A Terrible Johnny, is bedecked in riot gear, including a bandana to cover his face. He barges into a hospital maternity ward to witness a birth, yet once the baby (or whichever) arrives, things get pretty intense in the room.


"I'm known for having a lot to mention about things, some days also much," Johnny told MTV News about the clip. "This time I'm just gonna let the film and song do the talking for me. I already laid out as much pain as I can bare, no more words."


He's right. Earlier this year, he told Louder about the band's growing weariness with the current "mainstream rock sound" and how they attempted to expand their own on recent album MCID (which features visitors like Young Thug and Tee Grizzley). "For some of this album, we put down our usual instruments and made art with new equipment. Maybe Van Gogh sculpted something at one point in his life as an alternative opposed to painting. Feel me?" he said.


If the painstakingly tense new "16" video is any indication, one of these equipment was committing themselves to getting fantastical. Watch the clip above.