Middle Class Rut Defy Death In 'New Low' Video

Middle Class Rut are not only a hard-rocking band — their no-holds-barred sound has drawn comparisons to Rage Against the Machine and Deftones — but also one determined to push the envelope thanks to an anxiety-inducing video for their single "New Low."

Just before being named MTV's Push Artist of the Week, Middle Class Rut sat down with MTV News to discuss the video, a mini-movie of sorts which features bandmates Zack Lopez and Sean Stockham suffering various executions — ranging from a hanging to a firing squad — none of which actually result in death.

"It's funny, that song, when we wrote it, it was nothing like we'd ever done before," Stockham explained of the single from their return-to-rock-roots debut album, No Name No Color. "Normally, it's like, me hitting loud drums and [Lopez] hitting loud guitar and [both of] us screaming over it."

The track is "a total departure," as Stockham put it, for the duo, and they wanted to stretch the limits with the video as well. "We didn't want to do just a performance video. We wanted to do something different."

After recruiting a friend who "came up with something pretty cool," Stockham and Lopez found something oddly familiar about the idea of narrowly escaping death.

Stockham explained, "I mean, the idea of going from one execution scenario to the next without actually ever dying? That sounded like our 15 years of playing music."

What do you think of Middle Class Rut's video for "New Low"?