Knox Hill - Bang (Initial Thoughts)

I actually heard this song today already, it was on my Release Radar on Spotify. Time zones are fun when they work in my favor.
So, my initial thoughts about the song will be in my Weekly Recap that I'll post on Sunday.
Lyrics aren't up anywhere, so I'm not commenting on those. Set that "boundary" a long time ago - he doesn't post the lyrics, I won't break them down. I can't catch his bars, I think it's an accent thing... But I digress.

I'm here to talk about my thoughts and interpretations on the music video. Which was freakin awesome. He said it's like a movie and he wasn't exaggerating. It is like a short film.

It's an apocalyptic world, and I think Knox is the protagonist. There's also this movement that use a hand print logo as their symbol, and Vik is their leader, or a key figure in that movement. I think they're the antagonists (or prisoners). I also think the red hand print is symbolism for "having blood in their hands", although they themselves probably don't see it that way. This ain't a Disney movie, who's good and who's evil isn't that black and white. Both sides think they're the good guys.
I think the hand print people think they're re-establishing society after it collapsed, and they see Knox as an outlaw, disobeying the world order.
Knox sees them as a borderline cult-like movement, á la Orwell's 1984, and himself as a righteous man, fighting that. There's a scene where a Robocop-esque figure is watching over, as people walk in a line. They run a tight shift there. And I'm not sure if "they" are robots, or people wearing exoskeletons. It could be about robots taking over, but I think not. I think they're exoskeletons, or humans who declared themselves as leaders of this new world control those robots.

There's a lot of white, black and red symbolism. The hand print people wear mostly black, and their flag has a red handprint inside a circle on a white base. Knox has a white t-shirt, a red vest and black accessories. His pants are brown, but I don't see anything else brown, so I think that's irrelevant (except that they're not black). The hand print people's clothes all have very similar cuts, making them look like uniforms. They have to fit in and follow orders or there'll be consequences. The red hand print makes me think of violence, the color of blood. Circle means something is eternal. White is innocence, black is evilness. Which kinda paints the hand print people as the evil ones and Knox as the good guy from the get go, but hey... Sometimes it's good to underline a message, if that means it comes across better. Knox is wearing white under, but red on top of it. He presents violence (the boxing, the fight on the bridge), but that's not who he is on the inside.

The Robocop characters are wearing an eye symbol in the back of their jackets - a clear 1984 reference. Big Brother is always watching.

Knox said in the premiere, that his new album's name is hidden in the video as an easter egg. I think it's Pangea, which he wrote on an envelope there, in an abandoned house. Pangea was a continent that existed millions of years ago, where all the current continents were connected. Knox wrote a letter to Pangea, the whole united world.
He's talked for a long time now about how "we all bleed red", how the world is so divided and hateful and so many people don't see that we're all people... Like, in theory, they know the other people are people, they're the same species. But they become obsessed with the differences we have - sexes, genders, sexual orientations, ages, generations, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, homeland, language, culture, etc - that they stop seeing the humanity in the "other" humans. Their attitudes and how they talk about and treat these people they deep too "other" is not humane, is not how they'd treat another person who is in their "same" group. Knox wants to do his part in uniting the world.
We can also see that attitude in his character in the video. He grows plants, he collects water. He lives in harmony with the nature. But he also fights against the hand print people, or maybe he wants to free them from the Robocops and their leaders. He wants good things for the world, treating nature with respect, but he's also a rebel, who is ready to fight for what he thinks is right.