GUIDES Premiere the Music Video for Their Heavy & Hopeful Single, “DRAIN”

Within the type of music GUIDES specializes in, you can’t help but feel an air of resilience. It’s rooted in the passion of the vocals, the heaviness of the guitars, and the intensity of the message. The band is at the top of their game with the premiere of the music video for their latest single, “DRAIN.” A full-on audio assault, this is a perfect instance of the band’s penchant for joining together the aggressiveness of nu metal with the emotional urgency of post-hardcore. A highly cinematic and dynamic performance video, it helps emphasize the fury and controlled rage within the band, particularly with the words coming out of frontman Jonathan Joseph’s mouth. “Drain” is the first in a series of releases that the band has upcoming.

Discussing the song and the video, Joseph explains:

“‘DRAIN’ came from wrestling with a difficult reality: you can care deeply about someone and still be powerless to change the choices they make. Eventually, people grow apart in the truest sense of the phrase, and sometimes things end as a result. The song lives in that tension between wanting to help and realizing that growth has to come from within. It’s one of our heaviest and most aggressive songs musically, but underneath all of that is a sense of hope and the refusal to give up on someone you care about.

“You don’t really have a music video without the right location, and when we found this one, the immediate reaction was, ‘This is literally where the drain would go.’ It felt like the visual representation of the song already existed. The location features a dark underground corridor that leads to what looks like a dungeon, complete with an actual prison cell. Some of the rooms contained rusted, eroded drains with water still running through them, making it feel like we had stepped directly into the world of the song. Through the characters and their interactions, we wanted to explore the idea that growth is an internal conflict. It can be painful, uncomfortable, and even frightening, but refusing to confront it can become its own prison.

“‘DRAIN’ is the first release from a new body of work produced by Zac ‘ZROKK’ Diebels and marks the beginning of the most focused and intentional era of GUIDES to date. The journey continues with our next single, ‘FAILURE / DEFINES,’ arriving June 17th.”

The writing of “DRAIN” came after a period of real challenges for the band. This era was defined by loss and instability, which led towards recovery, and then that resilience you hear in this song. The song reflects that raw emotion that is rooted in survival and identity. This time period wasn’t all challenging, as GUIDES was also seeing their stock rise as a band, particularly as a live act. They had some big shows featuring sold-out crowds. At the same time, these challenges presented themselves. Ultimately, perseverance paid off, and it’s reflected in this new material.

As with any good band, GUIDES is focused on evolution and growth. You can trace that growth from their 2023 debut EP, When Everything Reverses, through to the new material they are beginning to present. Joseph has always been a large admirer of late ’90s and early 2000s hard rock and nu metal. He has a particular affinity for the hard rock coming out of Sacramento at that time. You can hear it in the band’s balanced, heavy, groove-driven riffs and melodic intensity. Their sound is more refined now, but it’s still as raw as they intended it to be when they were starting out. Focused and as productive as they have ever been, GUIDES is really raising the bar as songwriters and as a band, with a sharp, acute sonic identity.

GUIDES “Drain” single artwork