Rebel Noise · Video Premiere: “Waiting Here So Long” by The 65’s

Gritty and atmospheric punk/rock band The 65’s are veterans of the punk and rock ‘n’ roll music scene, having formed in 2009 in the industrialized and high-speed Northeast metropolitan region of New Jersey.

The restless and stark city environment that The 65’s come from has left a strong mark on the working-class band’s sound and attitude.

Joe Pugsley (guitar, vocals), John Steele (drums), Ryan Struck (bass, backing vocals) and Ed Roessler (guitar) dig deeply, creating sonically and emotionally raw and unaffected music.

Rebel Noise is stoked to host the premiere of a powerful video for “Waiting Here So Long,” a potent screed against the extremism that can be found in organized religion and its dangerous effect on the individual.

The dynamic song itself is half- pained lament and half- stirring anthem, charging forward with jagged and fiery guitar churn, grinding low-end bass line, pummeled drum beat, and crashing cymbals scintillation.

Pugsley growls out the lyrics with passionate force, his voice shot through with a bitter and lamenting urgency, “I’ve waited here so long / for you to come and save me / Time just goes on and on / with no sign of you at all.”

The cinematic grayscale-tone music video intercuts clips of Pugsley emotively addressing the camera with an abstract narrative that shows the possible fatal consequences of giving up self-identity to join a cult-like religious institution.

Images of drug abuse, a lone person running away, and roses laid on a gravestone give the video a sober and haunted feel, which is sealed by the final visual of mass graves at a cemetery.

The band comment that “Waiting Here So Long” is “…a sharp criticism of organized religion that digs into the dissociative effects, passivism, and eventual rupture of self it has the potential to cause. The video was directed and edited by Neil Sabatino of Mint 400 Records.”

The 65’s are currently working on new material for a 12” full length that will see the light of day in 2021.