Metal band Five Finger Death Punch appears to be really embracing the rebellious nature of their hard rock image, giving a searing takedown of American under COVID lockdowns. In their latest music video, the band flipped a giant middle finger to the establishment by mocking hypocritical mask mandates, and envisioning the American middle and lower classes as grunts enslaved by wealthy, smug elites. The video, which premiered on October 15, appeared to depict a caricatured modern day America at its most over-the-top and grotesque. The social commentary involved images of smiling, dystopian figures demanding COVID compliance, for the sake of public health, of course, average American consumers as brand-dead propagandized zombies, and the American working class as slaves in a communist U.S. of A. It was quite the statement. In the video’s opening, zombies were shown walking the countryside, some of them pushing carts filled with toilet paper meant to remind viewers of the insane freak out at the onset of media-induced Wu-Flu paranoia. That scene was followed by shots of obese men in Iron Man and Captain America costumes at a bar snorting cocaine, binge drinking and eating.  Perhaps poking at our pop culture, comic book heroes as truly worthless, vapid idols that do nothing for people, or have been so neutered to the popcorn-guzzling masses that they can’t even embody specific values anymore. In one of the video’s most provocative scenes, normal everyday Americans were lined up in a room as an old woman with an air of importance inspects their ranks. As the woman marched down the line of citizens, she gave a COVID mask to a man, who put it on in a deliberate fashion as if it were a medal bequeathing ceremony. The woman, who wore a red button on her coat which said “exempt,” pinned a button on the same gentleman which reads “compliant” and had communist symbols on it. Of course, we all could see what they were getting at.  The video continued by depicting slaves hammering away in a rock quarry, while wearing shirts with American flags on their backs. The twist was that the 50 white stars are replaced with 50 white hammer and sickle insignias and the United States is replaced with “The People’s Republic of America.” Was this meant to be the American working class slaving away for an abusive elite? At the climax of the video, however, our “exempt” authoritarian leader – who looks like a mix between former Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – pushed the cowed citizens too far with her dogs that she turned loose to loot and burn things. (Antifa and BLM, anyone?) Fed up, Americans cast aside their masks and rush onto a battlefield carrying American flags, perhaps symbolizing a new American revolution or second civil war. The video ended with one of the Founding Fathers waking up from the events as if they were a dream from some future American hell hole. Creepy.      In an official statement about the video, Five Finger Death Punch’s guitarist Zoltan Bathory explained that the video wasn’t necessarily anti-mask as it is anti-hypocrisy. “The mask segments are about hypocrisy on the highest level. When the rules are made for you but those who made them are exempt. Pretty much the standard in all dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.”  In response to critics who found the images disturbing, Bathory also claimed, “If I must explain this, the whole video is in the frame work of fiction, a dystopian nightmare of one of the founding fathers - right before he signs the constitution.”  Hopefully, Bathory and Five Finger Death Punch’s fantasy narrative stays fantasy. Though parts of it really seem to imitate our reality pretty closely.