“Guillotine” is the third installment in OpCritical‘s trilogy about oligarchic excess and inequality, and the seventh single the band has put out this year. The song draws a direct line to revolutionary France, where the wealth and greed of the monarchy and political elite pushed ordinary citizens to storm the barricades and send the king, queen, and their allies to the guillotine. The band draws that history forward into the present, arguing in their own words that the gap between “the oligarchs and the masses is even worse than it was during the French Revolution.” The music video runs with that imagery directly, disembodied heads floating among wads of cash, jewelry, and gold as the lyrics rail against a ruling class indifferent to people who can’t make ends meet.
I like how the classical guitar ties into the arrangement. The way I interpreted it is that it makes it timeless, or related to a time before our time, since lavish parties hiding high atop the tower are definitely not a new social issue; that’s how long this fight has been going on. The lyrics reflect that frustration; we don’t need any more rallying speeches or discussions about why this is wrong; we need actions. That refrain, “grab the pitchforks, heads off, straight to the guillotine,” lands with the same bluntness the song is going for, no metaphor left ambiguous. Musically, the band leans on rock mixed with alternative pop, orchestration, and an epic, soundtrack-style scale that gives the whole thing a cinematic push behind the anger in the lyric.
Directed and edited by Dmytro Laiko, the video matches that same unsubtle energy scene for scene. As the third chapter in a trilogy that started at the top of this year, “Guillotine” makes clear OpCritical isn’t interested in softening the message as the series goes on, and with more releases reportedly planned before the year is out, this looks like a band settling into a long-term project rather than a one-off statement.
