Posted May 5, 2008 by Conor_C :: 4 comments

Street Justice

Justice might be landing themselves in one giant tub of ‘merde’ with the release of the new video for Stress. Featuring a gang of five boys in black leather Justice jackets who probably aren’t going to be voted class president or help your grandmother across the street any time soon, the video follows the boys on the rampage through the streets of Paris. They feel a girl up in the metro, rob a car, beat the shit out of a number of people and even smash up a hippy’s bongos. This is Justice’s first music video to be non-animation and my god they’ve gone a hell of a long way to make up for lost time. This is about as far away from a cute cartoon as rape is from a handshake. Coming out in the same week as Grand Theft Auto 4, the Justice video could have just as easily been a promo for the game. The song Stress is built on a whirring loop that sounds like the noise mice performing frontal lobotomies might make. It makes you think you’ve got bugs under your skin or your nails are growing backwards into your fingers. A more apt title for a song has yet to be conceived. And the video plays up to the theme perfectly.

It was made by Romain Gavras, who’s also done Simian Mobile Disco’s I Believe and The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement, but has never really made anything of this ilk before. It makes Smack My Bitch Up look more like I Should Be So Lucky.