Watch Fish’s head-spinning video for new single Weltschmerz

Fish has released a video for the title track of his upcoming final album, Weltschmerz.

The singer describes the seven-minute single as “a 2020 Market Square Heroes”, referring to his original band Marillion’s 1982 debut single.

Says Fish: "Weltschmerz roughly translates as ‘the pain of the world’, and every song on the new album is about somebody’s approach to life, how they deal with this constant barrage of negativity from Trump to Coronavirus. I wanted to try and capture that in the songs.

“The song Weltschmerz is almost like a 2020 Market Square Heroes. It’s, like, ‘I’ve had enough, I’m not gonna sit back and take this.’”

The video for the song features the singer’s mud-caked head rotating against a backdrop of images that reflects the chaos of the modern world.

Fish explains: “What I wanted to do with the video was take a normal face back to a kind of mud-face, a real tribal, primeval thing, and spin them around. The face is constantly revolving against this montage of images, from plants and flowers to riots and tanks – it’s an individual revolving in a world of mayhem.”

The Weltzschmerz album will be released in July. Fish will be debuting the title track alongside other songs from the album on his upcoming tour, which kicks off in Aberdeen on March 13.

The tour will also see him play his 1990 album, Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors, in full, as well as a handful of tracks from Marillion’s debut album, Script For A Jester’s Tear.

The singer was recently reunited with the original copy of the poem that inspired Marillion’s iconic Jester character. The poem, titled The Allotment and written on the back of a copy of Genesis’ Duke album in 1980, was discovered in a charity shop in Scotland decades after it was lost.

Fish 2020 UK tour dates

Mar 13: Aberdeen Lemon Tree
Mar 15: Holmfirth Picturedrome
Mar 16: London Islington Assembly Hall
Mar 17: London Islington Assembly Hall
Mar 19: Cardiff Y Plas
Mar 20: Frome Cheese And Grain
Mar 21: Northampton Roadmender
Mar 23: Brighton Concorde
Mar 24: Bury St Edmunds Apex
Mar 25: Wolverhampton KK’s Steelmill
Mar 27: Manchester O2 Academy
Mar 28: Edinburgh Queen’s Hall

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.