One of the highlights from Lamb of God’s 2015 critically-acclaimed album VII: Sturm und Drang was definitely its cut “Embers,” which featured Deftones frontman Chino Moreno towards the end of the track. Now comes the song’s video treatment and it’s a cinematic affair.
The video begins with a spinning teddy bear engulfed in flames and then takes its viewer deep into the life of a couple clearly suffering emotional turmoil as embers and ash fall around them. And as the walls come apart, a baby crib rotate off into the abyss, which illustrates the song’s central theme.
As it so often does, art imitates life. Guitarist Mark Morton explained the meaning of the song during an essay he penned for Noisey, sharing that he originally wrote “Walk With Me in Hell” for his girlfriend (now wife) after the couple tragically lost their first child due to complications after delivery.
“Six weeks after I handed my dead daughter over to a nurse, I found myself walking on to the stage at Madison Square Garden to ‘entertain’ people,'” wrote Morton. “I was by no means ready to re-enter that world, but the music industry is vicious and unforgiving… and somehow, there I was.”
“One doesn’t ‘heal’ from the loss of a child,” he continued. “You don’t ever ‘get over it,’ but time passes. New experiences put a sort of distance between what is now and what was then. Still, the trauma of child loss leaves deep scars. Wounded people isolate themselves for protection. People in pain lash out in fear. Resentments and regrets fester. It becomes seemingly impossible to navigate a conflict that has an endless array of wrong answers but no apparent right ones. People you expected to be there for you disappear. People you barely even know hold you up. Relationships strain and crack under this type of pressure. Grief changes people.”
While Morton candidly cops to just how dark things got, he fortunately also found some hope and light again a year later with the birth of a healthy baby girl.
“She is the light of both of our lives. A light to find our way,” wrote Morton.
Read all of Morton’s commentary on “Embers” over at Noisey, and watch the video below.