Loser TV broadcasts 24/7. Its schedule features fake premium SMS adverts, impossible phone-in quizzes, late-night pornography and gambling, all linked by the same number: 81212. This is the visual universe MONT LOSER have built for CIA, one of the standout tracks from their debut album Confessional and an endless broadcast in which junk adverts and late-night television begin to resemble the protagonist’s thought patterns.
Emerging from a post-pandemic Parisian haze, MONT LOSER play a raw, abrasive strain of rock that pulls from grunge, noise rock, post-hardcore and post-punk without lapsing into nostalgia. Although the imagery suggests conspiracy, surveillance and media manipulation, the song ultimately points towards a much more familiar form of paranoia.
Or rather, obsession.
The lyrics begin as a fractured heartbreak song. But the agency that watches, listens and knows everything is not an outside force; it is an internal one. “I am the CIA. In my head”. Paranoia becomes a romantic metaphor, or perhaps it is the other way around: love turns into a form of permanent surveillance. The protagonist’s mind becomes a 24-hour channel, saturated with memories, noise and junk messages.
A heavy, relentless drum pattern lays the groundwork for abrasive guitars, feedback, fuzz bass and repetitive riffs. The vocals move constantly between spoken delivery and melody, the three voices overlapping and colliding like recurring thoughts. Somewhere between the density of METZ and the wiry tension of Viagra Boys, MONT LOSER keep the song moving forward without ever releasing the tension.
The closing credits, accompanied by elevator music and footage of the band clowning around in front of the camera, provide the perfect release valve. After three and a half minutes of media-fuelled anxiety, MONT LOSER remind us that all this chaos also contains a streak of absurd humour. Somewhere between the noise and the laughter, the channel stays on.
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