Singled Out: Vajra's Crown Or Crucify

Keavin Wiggins | 11-01-2022

Cover art

New York dark alt-rockers Vajra recently released a music video for their single, "Crown Or Crucify" and to celebrate we asked Annamaria Pinna to tell us about the track and visual. Here is the story:

I was with someone I was planning on being with for the rest of my life. This person turned out to be someone different from who he said he was. In hindsight, he was just different from who I thought he was. I was attached to the image I created of him.

Love is like grabbing water with your closed fist. You can't. It goes where it goes, and your attempted possession of it will only bury you. What is the relationship between love and sacrifice? Between sacrifice and surrender? What do we sacrifice for our partners so they can find the threads that weave them into fuller, more connected beings? What do they sacrifice for us? I was exploring these concepts in 'Crown Or Crucify' after surfacing from that relationship. The keyboard part came pretty quickly, and that informed the rest of the song.

The video, Dave and I wrote, shot, directed and edited 100% DIY ourselves. It is one video in a series of videos with the other songs on Irkalla that fit together into one short film. We are currently editing them all together and adding additional footage. The story is inspired by the Sumerian classic hero myth, 'The Descent of Inanna." For the shots where the character is burying her lover, we emptied out our living room and bought 20 bags of dirt that we hauled up five flights of stairs to our NYC walk-up apartment (and then back down those stairs when we were done). It was pretty crazy but we love those shots. We also recreated the album cover in that dirt at the end of the video. We kept the lyric that Dave wrote as a permanent part of our wall. This wall is a place where our friends are invited to write anything they want, and it's now becoming a really cool piece of living art. And of course, Dave had crazy fun with the goat head - a lot of condoms and lube....

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here