It was a year ago when the grounds of the Boston Marathon shook with explosions that sent shockwaves into the hearts of Americans and people the world entire. In honor of the victims, their families and all those affected, ¡MAYDAY! wrote “Marathon Man” for their sophomore Strange Music album Believers. Today they debut the music video to accompany the powerful song.

The delay between the album’s initial release in the summer of 2013 and the music video’s debut was one part intentional, one part coincidental, as one of ¡MAYDAY!’s emcees Bernz explains,

Since the video was a lot of special effects and stop motion it took a long time to make. It was taking a long time as is and then the anniversary was approaching so we just decided to go ahead and wait until then and that that would be a better timing.

Explaining the impact that the bombing had on the group, Bernz shares the sentiments that we all felt when we heard of the tragedy, but also revealed family ties to the Boston Marathon that made the event ring more on a personal note.

I guess I probably shared with everybody. It was a fucked up tragedy obviously and the most fucked up thing about it is that it was just innocent bystanders. At the same time, my aunt is a marathon runner and she goes to the New York marathon and the Boston Marathon and all that. She wasn’t there for that marathon but she actually ran the Boston Marathon the year before so it was also fucked up in that sense in that it could have been somebody from my family. It was just all around one of those moments where everybody’s gotta sit down and reevaluate.

Turning the tragedy into inspiration, the event quickly led to a song that is a cornerstone of the Believers album.

I think we just found it as an opportunity to speak on something political and relevant without being too preachy. That was basically it and I think you need to take advantage of those opportunities when they occur.

Making the song a first-person narrative made it so the resonance could spread farther than talking about the tragedy on a third-person level, which also made for a less sensationalist approach to something that was already in all of our faces. The subdued execution results in a song of profound meaning and power, all which are conveyed in the video’s artful take of the track.

WATCH

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