I go through stretches when I fall behind in reading other metal blogs because I get too distracted by other things, like this blog — which I know all of you read every day, without fail, even if it means skipping a meal or a shower or letting your cat/dog fend for itself. Yeah, right. But I do always read Steff Metal‘s regular feature called Linking Horn because there’s always something interesting in there that I’d otherwise miss.
Her current Linking Horn feature linked to a Metal Insider piece I hadn’t seen which summarized a recent Nielsen Music and Midem report about music consumption habits. Some of what’s in that report wasn’t surprising — like the data showing that almost 50% of online users obtain their music from the internet without paying; the report found that neither digitally downloading a full album nor a single track reached 20%. What a shock.
But one item did surprise me: The survey showed that 58% of online users consume music by watching music videos through the computer and 20% watch music videos on their mobile phones. Granted, the survey wasn’t limited to any particular musical genre, and the numbers could be entirely different if you were to conduct a survey limited to metalheads. I know I don’t watch metal music videos that often because, mainly, they suck.
Usually, the videos are so bad that they detract from good songs and do nothing to make mediocre songs better. Instead, they seem to function more as bait than actual entertainment — a way of luring you into listening to a song or  a band for the first time out of curiosity (because it’s faster than downloading), though sometimes I’ll watch one for a song I already know just to see what the band looks like. But I don’t claim to be like most people, and the study seems to verify that most people like to consume music (and probably print) when they can see pictures at the same time — which is why moving pictures make such attractive bait.
All of which is a windy lead-in to the real point of this post. Over the last couple of days I took the bait and watched some new just-released music videos, and for different reasons, I thought they were worth sharing. Â They feature music from Vreid (Norway), Stigma (Italy), Semargl (Ukraine), and members of Dreaming Dead (U.S.). Â (after the jump . . .)
VREID
The first video is for a song called “The Sound Of The River”, which will be included on a forthcoming album from Vreid. This will be the band’s fifth album, but this video was the first Vreid track I’d ever heard. I thought the song was quite cool — a blend of melodic black metal and prog-metal, with a haunting melody, very interesting drum rhythms, and a segment of clean singing that I thought enhanced the song (and you know how rarely we have that feeling about clean singing around here).
As for the video, I thought it was above-average, mainly for the fog-shrouded waterscapes (I could have used more of those scenes and fewer of the half-naked wretch in chains). Anyway, as bait, this video succeeded, because now I want to hear the rest of that new album when it comes.
Vreid’s new album, entitled “V”, is scheduled for release on February 7 via Norway’s Indie Recordings, and it’s available for pre-order now on Amazon (and elsewhere).
STIGMA
The next video was released yesterday by Italy’s Stigma for a song called “The Undertaker”, which is the title track from an EP released in digital-only format earlier this month. The same song also appeared on the band’s second full-length release, Concerto For the Undead, which appeared last April. I didn’t hear that album, but a couple years ago my NCS collaborator IntoTheDarkness gave me a CD he’d made that included a song from Stigma’s 2008 debut, When Midnight Strikes!, and I remember liking it. So, I decided to watch this video.
The song is a catchy piece of metalcore, thankfully without any clean singing. It includes some more-subtle-than-usual breakdowns and an infectious instrumental passage near the end, and although I can’t say the song breaks any new ground, it successfully tempted me to pick up the EP for later listening. As for the video, I’m afraid it’s nothing special, but at least it wasn’t an annoying distraction from the music — which is my default expectation about metal vidz.
The EP includes three new songs, in addition to “The Undertaker”. It was mixed/mastered by Bleeding Through vocalist Brandan Schieppati and Anaal Nathrakh‘s Mick Kenney, and it’s now available on iTunes and Amazon MP3.
SEMARGL
Okay, regular readers know that those genre-benders in Ukraine’s Semargl are one of my guilty pleasures. At least one of you has asked that I stop foisting them on you. Well, no such luck.
I first got hooked on a song called “Credo Revolution” from the band’s 2010 album, Ordo Bellictum Satanas, and featured the video for the song in an NCS post last year. It’s pop music with black-metal trappings, corpse-paint with plenty of tits and ass, tremolo picking and electro dance beats. Then, a bit later in the year, I offered a live performance video of the band playing another song from that album, called “Credo Possess”. Yes, all the songs on the album begin with the word Credo.
So, yesterday Semargl released yet another video, this one for the song “Credo Flaming Rain”, and of course I had to watch it. I already knew the song, but I was hoping for some shots of Nera, who’s the front-woman for a band called Darzamat and supplied guest vocals on this track. The song itself is another slice of rock (this one, at a softer pace) with black-metal trappings, and it includes Jonny Maudling (Bal-Sagoth, My Dying Bride) on piano. Once again, it’s not the kind of music we usually listen to or write about here, but like everything else Semargl does, it’s catchy, and I think Nera has a nice voice. So shoot me in the head, I’m weak.
The video, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired. It got a bit monotonous, I had trouble linking the visual symbology to the song’s lyrical subject matter, and the chick in the black gown and mask isn’t even Nera. But I’m showing you the video anyway because . . . well . . . it’s Semargl.
In addition to Nera and Maudling, the album features guest appearances by Iscariah (ex-Immortal), Novy (ex-Behemoth), Vrangsinn (Carpathian Forest, Nattefrost), and Ashmedi (Melechesh) as producer.
STEPHANIE PICKARD AND ELIZABETH SCHALL (DREAMING DEAD)
Last but not least, here’s a video of guitarists Stephanie Pickard and Elizabeth Schall performing a dual-guitar instrumental at the Fernandes booth at this past weekend’s NAMM international music industry trade show in Anaheim, California. I’m a Dreaming Dead fan, I’m an admirer of Schall’s singing and playing, and I watched this because I was curious to see what Stephanie Pickard was all about. Dreaming Dead announced earlier this month that she had joined the band as a second guitarist, which makes DD one of the few metal bands to feature two female shredders. The shredding in this video starts just before the 2:00 mark.
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Hope you got something out of one or more of these videos. As always, enjoy the rest of your fucking day.
37 Responses to “MOVING PICTURES”
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“The report also confirms the industry’s biggest fear: that almost 50% of online users obtain their music from the internet without paying.”
I think I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one. I’ve seen some labels putting forth numbers (and see the same with video games) and I don’t think they’re accurate. That’s not to say piracy isn’t an issues, but I do not believe that the numbers being used are correct. And the thing is, just how comprehensive is this report? What sources have they used and what steps have they taken to validate their findings. Sure, legitimate sales are easier to track than illegal downloads, so there’s not as much discrepancy on that side. But in short, I seriously doubt that that the other numbers are right on – and if they are, there’s more to it than the numbers. A download isn’t necessarily a lost sale – nor should a download automatcally state that someone got the album for free instead of paying for it.
Anyhoo, to the vids…
I liked the Semargl tune. It sounds.. I dunno, normal, for lack of a better term. The video’s okay, but whether a blindfolded woman walking through the woods as the seasons change has anything to do with the song is beyond me. She could just be walking through the woods with a blindfold on for no other reason. Sometimes it’s just that simple.
Made a bit more sense than Vreid’s video. Band playing outside. Okay. Tall Gollum-like dude in chains dragging a headstone. Um, yeah. Dark figure on a foggy river, probably meant to repsresent Charon. Sure. Another bald guy (or probably the same guy) emerging from a fleshy cocoon on a tree and then thrashing about. Yeah. Song’s decent, but I thought the clean vocals took away from the song. Which is a bit odd, since I like clean vocals. Just didn’t seem to fit here.
As for Dreaming Dead, I just haven’t really gotten into them. Adding Stephanie on guitar may help some, but I’d need to hear something with better audio than their NAMM appearance. But I will agree that it wouldn’t hurt to have more females in metal that aren’t singing or behind the keyboards – preferably not making it their selling point.
Ah, where to start? That Nielsen report was commissioned by an outfit called Midem and was based on a survey of 26,644 “consumers”. Beyond that, I’m clueless about how it was done since I don’t feel like giving a bunch of personal info in order to download the full report. If anyone else cares to do that, here’s the link:
http://blog.midem.com/2011/01/music-three-times-more-consumed-via-youtube-than-via-legal-downloads-exclusive-nielsen-white-paper/
But I assume the only way they got the info on downloading was by asking the survey respondents what they did to get music. You also make a good point about questioning whether an illegal download means a lost sale. For example, I don’t know whether the survey asked people whether they would have spent money if they couldn’t have downloaded for free. And even if they had, who knows whether the answers to that hypothetical question would be reliable?
Semargl: I’ve seen the lyrics to the song, which is why I was puzzled by the visual imagery. Lyrics can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl9-7D0Wmhc
Doesn’t mean I don’t like the song — I do — but I would rather have watched the demons in Semargl playing the song with Nera singing. That’s my general prejudice about music vidz — just show the damn bands playing the music — because more often than not, setting the music to something else usually fails.
Vreid: I thought for sure this would be your kind of song. I have higher hopes for the album we’re talking about tomorrow (the review I thought I’d have done last Thursday).
Dreaming Dead: Yeah, the audio isn’t very good, and the ladies look a bit stilted just playing in a booth at a trade show. I bet they’ll be a lot more fun to watch on stage. I have high hopes for the next release. But I have high hopes about everything. Except metal videos.
About the videos portion of the study, I wonder if that’s only considering official videos or if it includes bootlegs or the much more common posting of a song from the album set to some random images or, more often, just the album’s cover. As for the “lost sale” portion, I don’t mean a willingness to have bought it instead of downloading, I mean that some people actually do buy the album/song(s) after downloading. Of course, there are those who wouldn’t have bought it anyway. As it is, I question the use of actual downloads (I don’t trust the numbers) as a litmus test for any scenario (would have bought, would not have bought, decided to buy, etc.).
Vreid wasn’t bad, I just thought the clean portion didn’t work for this song. Not sure why. I’d have to hear more from them than the one song to make a decision about them.
The is the only time I’ve heard Sigma and though I’m not going to automatically dismiss them, “The Undertaker” didn’t really do it for me. Generally speaking, not really the kind of thing I care to listen to. I wouldn’t turn it off if I heard it on the radio (that is, if it were to get airplay) or on a stream on the rare occasion that I tune in to one, but beyond that…
I suppose the survey could have delved deeper and asked people who said they downloaded illegally whether they eventually bought any of the downloaded music, but I can’t tell that from the Metal Insider summary. Since so many of the most interesting questions are hypothetical, I suppose there can always be question marks about the survey results. But I think I agree with you that just collecting data about the volume of unpaid downloads, standing alone, doesn’t get you as far as many people might think it does.
I have to agree with Elvis here, those numbers sound like bullshit propaganda, the first paragraph from the “why” part of the Midem website:
“MIDEM and MidemNet bring together the music industry’s influencers and decision makers from across the globe. MidemNet provides insightful analysis into the mobile and digital music markets.”
No offense but doesn’t really sound like an organization that’s unbiased or has nothing to gain from releasing these kind of reports.
I’m not sure if anybody here is old enough to remember the bad old days, before the Al Gore had invented the intertrucks, when you heard your favorite band had just come out with a new release and you rushed out to buy it only to be disappointed that it was 90% shit. To those bands, yes the digital age sucks, because you can no longer sell a shitty album on your name or the strength of a single song. For bands that produce quality music (and perhaps here is where the brunt of the problem lies) the digital age isn’t a problem. Most people will support bands as they want them to keep producing. I think there is a generational divide here though with many younger people (those who grew up when all music was always “free”) who do have an attitude of entitlement, that music is meant to be free to them online. However these people also tend to believe in other economic fallacies so the problem here is not necessarily limited to the music industry.
I’m split on videos, mostly because most videos are, like the ones above, pretty shitty. Most videos are more about bands showing themselves off and less about the music. A video should be, for lack of a better term, the third dimension to the music, just as with the rest of the presentation, it should follow the concepts in the songs. Few bands manage to pull this off, that said I do like to watch videos now and then, and I think live videos have their place.
One of my favorite videos is from the French band Spektr, they are ambient / noise / black metal, and quite an acquired taste, even I can only listen to so much of them; but this video (which comes as an extra on the 2006 Near Death Experience) is brilliant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itrRBaFWJEE
Regardless of if you like the music, the video captures the essence of the “song”. The part leading up to and just after 04:50 is pure genius.
Holy hell. I don’t think you could have found a better example to illustrate the possibilitty of music and video complementing and completing each other than that Spektr video. They fit together so seamlessly that it’s almost as if they were part of a simultaneous process of creation. Twelve minutes well-spent.
In my ideal world, music would always be part of a package greater than the sum of its parts — the music, the album art, the lyrics, and video. There’s no question it’s possible, and wonderful when it happens successfully, but it takes gifted imagination, lots of talent, and money. I suppose I could add to that package the possibility of visual art accompanying live performances, too, so that even live, you get something like that Spektr video. I saw that that successfully done most recently when Neurosis played in Seattle on Dec 30-31, and i remember it being done well by Mastodon and Dark Tranquiillity in live shows within the last couple years (video being projected on a screen behind the band).
Problem is that most metal videos don’t come close to pulling off that kind of achievement — where the video enhances the music (your “third dimension”). As I mentioned above, most of the time I just wish they’d show the band, because what they’re showing instead is so feeble as to detract from the music instead of add that extra dimension.
A quick side note, to be 100% correct that video is not for a song that’s actually on the album. It’s meant to be a companion to the album. That said I think they set the bar for how to correctly do video to music.
My only point of disagreement with you would be that making a video that’s this well complementing to music would require (a lot) of money, there is plenty of free video editing software out there, and should you want to film it all yourself a camera these days doesn’t run that much. What it does take is a lot of vision to make sure it lives up to the music and lyrics.
I think you’re 100% right though with live performances as well, they shouldn’t just be about a band on stage playing what you hear form your speakers it should be a complete experience. I’ve honestly never seen a band deliver that from stage, but I think that’s a very tall order, and it would take a very special band to ever completely deliver a live performance that lives up to music and lyrics.
Well, I have no personal experience, so the money thing was an assumption. Seems to me that to do something like Spektr did, you’d either have to have a lot of training at video editing (which I’d think would be a lot to ask of most musicians), or a collaborator who isn’t charging — or money. But again, I have no experience. But regardless, I absolutely agree that what’s essential, beyond all else, is a lot of vision — the ability to imagine the result in the mind’s eye and then turn it into reality.
I can’t remember who said it, but there was a comment about the earlier days when a band could get by with a shitty tape and make a name for themselves in a live environment, but when it became cheaper to produce a demo or album, it also became easier to make a better sounding one and that bands couldn’t back it up on stage any more. Kind of a culling of the herd, if you will.
Sadly, I think this is true to this very day.
Some bands are better in the studio, some are better on stage. That’s just how it goes. But you have to at least be decent in both if you’re doing both. While some bands/projects simply have no desire to play live (or can’t because of finances, location or whatever), there are probably many who don’t do so because they would be terrible. Some music would be hard to reproduce – and do it well – on stage, while others have probably relied on digital tricks of all sorts a bit too much to even make the attempt.
Quite frankly, it’s probably better that some “bands” never make a live appearance.
To be honest with you, I don’t think there are that many bands who don’t play live because they realize it would be awful. I’m sure there are some, but most bands who record music that they could never play live are not smart enough to know that. They will go out and play live and it will be horrible, but they’ll never realize it, or chalk it up to a bad night or whatever, self delusion is rampant in this business. Other than you’re 100% spot on.
Coincidentally, the band Contaigeon that I wrote about in one of today’s other posts doesn’t play live. In their case I would guess it’s because of the difficulty of reproducing their sound on stage. I did read this interesting comment by the band’s guitarist (Rahab) in the interview I cited in the post: “We are also considering playing a few shows, but getting other people to play the instruments. Like I said we have no interest touring, but I would like to see how the songs work live and we have had a number of volunteers for the idea.” You don’t see that every day.
Cool concept, almost like attending your own funeral you can hang out with the audience and hear what they really think of you (or rather the perceived you)
🙂 Or like a playwright attending a performance of his play in the audience.
Elvis is right on all accounts, and I would argue especially correct about the videos. Since youtube has allowed playlists, you can create a video playlist and stream songs without needing to return to and navigate youtube to find new songs to play. Since it’s automated, I primarily used this function while at work, and only when I couldn’t find the material I was looking for on grooveshark. And on that note – if any of you are still using Pandora, shoot yourself in the face and start using grooveshark. Or if you are one of our European friends, use Spotify.
I’ve not used Pandora in many many years, however I remember thinking it was kinda cool when it came out. Quickly glancing at the website and at groozeshark it looks like not much has changed. What makes groozeshark superior? Do they have more music? Is there algorithm better?
Grooveshark is not merely a recommendation site, it’s a global on-demand library. In other words, you can play anything you want, anytime you want, for an unlimited number of plays. It does have a radio function, but I tend not to use it if you can queue up entire albums or make your own playlists.
Glad I’m not the only one who sees these results on the bullshit-o-meter.
Granted, illegal downloads are a legit issue for bands/labels/distributers/etc., but it’s a matter of just how extensive it really is. I wouldn’t call 26,644 people a suitable sample size to begin with and without looking at any further info that the paper may present, I’m not entirely sure how reliable such information would be. Stats can be made up, fudged and used however you want to. While sales may be down, I don’t think it’s quite as widespread as some make it out to be and I think the buying trends have actually spread out; there are so many more labels and bands active today. The big labels may not see as much of the action, but that could very well be because people are spending their money on bands signed to smaller and/or indie labels.
It’s the same with other forms of entertainment, who also have a tendency to use whatever numbers they can get a hold of. Take video games, for example. Because of developer and/or publisher reaction to the findings, we now have more restrictive EULA’s (and a lot of people tend to overlook the fact that buying a game (or any software) usually means that you have the right to use it, but that doesn’t mean anything goes), copy protection (which generally is not a problem) and restrictive/invasive DRM. Again, there are more developers and publishers out there competing for our attention spans and our dollars, along with more forms on distribution – consoles, PC/Mac and download services like Steam and Direct2Drive. Like with music, some take an aggressive stance because of piracy, others don’t let the torrents dictate how they run their business. Same goes for movies and TV shows on computers, consoles and various download/streaming services on said platforms.
Now, as for making videos, you don’t need a lot of equipment, software or money to make a decent video. You just need someone who knows what they’re doing and a a good idea of what you want to present. It’s hard to find the really good videos that have the right amount of everything – whether it’s a low-or-no budget production using friends’ stuff or big budget studio productions with CG and extensive postwork. After all, when you polish a turd, you still have a turd.
Live videos are iffy, just like live albums. Among the live albums I have, only one really stands out as really being able to translate the experience into stereo – that would be Iced Earth’s “Alive In Athens”. I don’t have a lot of live albums in my collection, but of those I do have, only Metallica’s “S&M” comes close to having that extra oomph to it that that album has. Concerts aren’t meant just to be heard. They’re meant to be experienced. No matter how good the band may be, there’s only so much of that that can be carried over in recorded form. Some albums/videos/DVD’s do a good job, but IMO, few have been able to really capture the moment.
I certainly won’t argue your point about live albums. I have a handful, but listened to them once, and that was it. They just don’t match up to studio recordings. One of the exceptions, I thought, was Meshuggah’s “Alive” DVD/CD from last year. Another is “At Fillmore East” by The Allman Brothers Band, but that’s not metal. Still a fucking good record though. 🙂
On this matching the studio recording, do you really want that from an album? Or are you saying they can’t even reach that, low, bar? Cause honestly when I get a live album now-a-days and it’s been run through pro tools or what not and it everything is perfect, every lead is spot on – I dunno I feel slightly cheated. The whole thing about a live album is that it’s supposed to be live and with that territory comes a certain amount of “imperfection”. I can accept that.
My major pet peeve with live albums are front men who just don’t know when to shut up. I want to hear the songs not your life’s story or political thoughts or “what’s up motherfuckers” for the 53rd time in 7 songs.
No, I don’t want to hear the exact same thing.
What I meant is that bands started creating music they couldn’t reproduce live – at least not without cheating. As Joe Walsh once said on the Bob & Tom show, “Just because you wrote a song doesn’t mean you can play it”, and I think that’s part of the problem. Some songs are hard to do live, either becaue of their difficulty or because you’ve layered 30 tracks to create one song, but only have four people to play it. With increased production values, it became harder to tell if the band would even be worth going to see live, whereas a cheap, shitty sounding demo could at least give you a better idea of what to expect, because you were actually hearing the band itself, not a bunch of processing and fancy recording tricks.
Mistakes happen, strings break, feedback is to be heard, sometimes the singer fucks up a line somehow. Unless it takes a long time to recover from a broken string or something else that goes wrong, I want all these things to remain on an album. The only thing that should normally be done is some mixing for the end product, no overdubs or processing, although I can understand if there’s something the band/mixer/producer focuses on a bit (again to use DT as an example, John Petrucci did use an overdub once to patch where his guitar had been accidentally unplugged at the beginning when getting into position). No big deal. As long as I’m hearing a live album in the end and not a bunch of studio work replacing flubs, I’m fine.
I completely agree about the frontmen who don’t shut up. If you’re recording with the intent or releasing it, keep your stand-up routine to a minimum. And one other thing that bugs me about the stuff in between songs, why the fuck do engineers continue to leave commentary about the NEXT track as part of a song. The song should be over, I don’t want to be told what song is coming up next. I can look and find out. Or I’ll find out when you start the song. If the song is over, let it be over. If you’re not going to edit the “now were gonna play SONGNAMEHERE for you fuckers” out of the album, make it a separate track or use indexing to put it in negative numbers (looking at runtime) on the song it’s announcing.
Probably not so big an issue when listening to a live album in its entirety, but ripping it and playing a mix (or listening to a broadcast/stream), it tends to get annoying.
$.02
I meant “match up” as a matter of my personal taste. When I’m in a club or a concert venue, I don’t expect or want the band to sound just like they do in the studio. But when I’m listening to a record, I just find that I don’t go back to many live albums. The many things about a live performance that make it worthwhile in person (the sights, the energy, the volume, the presence of other people going nuts) don’t get captured very well (or at all) by a recording. And the differences — the small or large variations in the way a favorite song is played, and sung — I’ve usually found more jarring than interesting.
Ministry once had a live album “In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up”, in many ways I think that title perfectly describes a live album. If you didn’t or couldn’t show up a live album can give you an idea of what the bands live potential. It’ll never be the real deal – no matter how many Watain songs you listen to you’ll never smell like blood, fire and death without being there (well that’s not necessarily true, but it holds for most situations). That said with the improvements in home entertainment I can see a future where you could get pretty damn close. With a projector, a 110″ screen and 7.1 channel surround sound and it can start to feel pretty damn real.
I’m afraid that future will be forever far away in my case, at least as long as I’m married. My wife hates metal. Really hates it.
To me, live albums are like instrumental albums and to some extent, compilation albums; few achieve what they’re reaching for in my ears. But that’s not to say they suck. Not so. There some some awesome moments to be heard that make it worth having the album.
For a concert to work as a recording or a broadcast, it takes the right band, the right venue, the right croud and the right crew to all make it something more than a mere recording of a performance. And that’s what makes it so hard for a live album to really become something more.
I think Alive In Athens was the proper gathering of all the elements, although I haven’t seen it on DVD, so I don’t know if that was handled as well. It has an energy that I haven’t heard in any other live album. S&M was different, but handled very well. Not perfection, but that’s alright. None of the other bands that tried adding symphonic elements to their songs (that is, the bands for who that wasn’t the norm) had the same success; it worked for a couple songs, but the rest fell kind of flat. Not even Dream Theater, who I would have thought could have gone above any beyond anyone when they did Score. However, it wasn’t a bad album, and the Octavarium Orchestra did make that part of Score sound different from a “typical” DT performance. It could have been so much more. Operation: LIVEcrime also comes close to having that same kind of feel to it, but I may be biased since Operation: MindCrime is still one of my favorite albums (and always will be) and one of a few cassettes I managed to wear out by overplaying it.
Of course, KISS’ “Alive!” does deserve mention. Maybe not the greatest live album ever, but certainly one of the most important ones. Plus, if you dig into the interviews – moreso from the late 70’s into 80’s and 90’s than from the past decade – that album probably served as inspiration and background music for many a musician learning their instrument of choice more than any other.
But for every truly awesome live album out there, there are five duds and five others with a few cool moments, but nothing else special about them.
Videos are difficult as all hell. We tried it out a few years back* and even if filming goes fast, it takes forever to cut and fix with it.
As for good videos, I think there are some out there, Gojira’s Vacuity comes to mind. (This song also benefits from being FUCKING AWESOME)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gv7fo6mefo
Oh, and if you don’t mind some humor in your metal, Sterbhaus – House of the Dead Dwarf is a brilliant video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZHuAY6ECJk
I don’t know, some bands just try too hard to be cool/evil/whatever in metal videos. And some are just plain confusing.
Necrophobic – Blinded By Light, Enlightened By Darkness – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpLkSCqMS_0
Centinex – Arrival of the Spectrum Obscure – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAgJnNU8GP0&feature=related
(Seriously, why does she play chess all of a sudden!?)
Dark Funeral – My Funeral – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEVodXzNmPM (Oh soo evul! Love the face on the drummer, silly grin the whole time)
Don’t get me wrong, all those songs kick some serious ass, but the videos…the videos….
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwhJ63jIbFY
More metal bands should use sock puppets in their videos, especially sock puppets who look like the band members, down to the piercings. Unlike actual people, sock puppets can be set on fire at the end of a video. I don’t know if that Sterbhaus video falls into the category of something that complements and completes a song, but it’s sure a kick to watch. And yeah, the Vacuity vid (and song) are awesome.
Very cool Necrophobic song, which I’d not heard. Lots of “evil” videos seem to involve crazy people crawling. Why is that? I liked the Centinex song, too, but the video is ridiculous. It seems to follow the rule that no video can be completely bad if it includes a hot babe showing lots of skin. It would have been better with sock puppets. “My Funeral” is a great song. The video is a good example of trying too hard to be evil. Blood will only get you so far. Would have been better with sock puppets.
We featured that Canopy video the first of the many times we’ve written about you folks. It helps that the song is a killer, but I’ve thought from the first time I saw it that it was a very cool way to show the band playing. There must be other people who’ve used something like that technique, but this video is the only one I’ve seen that does it. I can imagine it was a helluve lotta work to do. Would not have been better with sock puppets. 🙂
Less Semargl.
More Necrophobic.
LMFAO. And you get the prize for pithiness on this page.
More sock puppets!
Yeah, Sterbhaus have a rather large dose of humor in their metal. Saw that they were looking for a new vocalist, if I had still lived in Stockholm I’d be so up for that, haha! They seem like my kinda people.
But yeah, more sock puppets to the people!
Not sure if it would fit in on Menhir though…:P
I think sock puppets would not fit with Menhir. If you want sock puppets, I think you need a side project. A moldy canopy with holes in it.
Perfect examples of videos that are utter shit. The Centinex video, you know I can imagine how that meeting wen.
Marketing goon #1 “let’s have the band play live in some old industrial site, that’s like metal and stuff”
Marketing goon #2 “oh but let’s add some side-boob, a bit off ass, and throw in a nuclear bomb towards the end for good measure”
Marketing goon #1 “well duh! of course”
The Necrophobic video made me want to claw me eyes out …and the DF video I’d seen before and it sucked then and it still does. Like F said, the songs rule, watching the videos you actually feel your IQ dropping.
I wonder if bands like Centinex ever have the balls to tell whoever’s in charge of the video concept/production, “I’d rather have you fuck me in the ass than have something like this represent my music.” Just wondering. Surely the bands don’t come up with ideas like that. Surely.
Not sure how much sarcasm I should read into your reply, but while I do place a lot of blame on labels and marketing drones, unfortunately I think a lot of bands just lack vision. They’re just told they have to make one and go along with whatever is made. I’m probably expecting too much, but if you know it’s in your contract that you have to make promotional videos you should work that out when you write the music and lyrics.
I wasn’t being sarcastic — just genuinely hoping/believing that the bands don’t come up with the video crap themselves. Also, I’d guess most of them have very little leverage when it comes to videos financed by someone else. But yet again, I have no personal knowledge on that.
All cool vids, but like you I’m more impressed by the music in all cases. Love those Vreid and Semargl songs. Particularly the first one scores extremely high in the originality department. Love that cymbal work!
Yay! I’m not alone!