In January 2011, Prosthetic Records re-released the debut album (Hatred For Mankind) by the UK’s Dragged Into Sunlight, which had previously seen only limited distribution through Mordgrimm Records. I reviewed it not long after, calling it “a cataclysmic, corrosive, chaotic, cathartic, crushing cavalcade of cacophony” and “one of the most disturbingly brilliant albums” I’d ever heard:
“Whether droning and discordant or voracious and seething, the songs are inventively designed to create an atmosphere of soul-rending despair and to generate the kind of adrenaline surge brought on by the threat of imminent destruction. Listening is like being caught in the roaring squall of a hurricane, realizing too late that you can’t ride it out like you stupidly thought you could: It’s the end of your world, in a maelstrom of overwhelming sound.”
When I wrote the review, I had planned to include along with it an embed of the band’s official video for the song “Buried With Leeches”, which was then streaming on YouTube. I thought the video complemented the cold, inhuman music, perhaps even completed it. On the other hand, the imagery was horrific, gruesome, and utterly hopeless (not unlike the music). But before I could post the review, YouTube removed the video because it violated the company’s policy on “nudity or sexual content” — which was absurd. Yes, there were momentary images of a penis in the video, but there was nothing erotic or pornographic about it. Instead, the images displayed the humiliating horror of a man being degraded and tortured in agony, stripped of his dignity as well as his clothing.
I thought for sure the video would surface again someplace, but it hasn’t, at least not that I’ve found. Every web site that had been streaming the thing was just using an embed of the YouTube clip, and so when YouTube removed it, it disappeared from everyplace else on the web and hasn’t been replaced. I was listening to Hatred For Mankind recently, and although I’ve never hosted a video here at NCS before, I decided to ask Dragged Into Sunlight if I could do that — to give the video a new home — if I could figure out how to do it. They agreed. I did figure it out. And now you and everyone else in the world can stream it again, after the jump.
The video didn’t really disappear entirely. The band made it available as part of a download file on their web site. To this day, you can go there, download the video file, and play it on your computer, as long as your computer is enabled to play video in Microsoft’s .wav format. No problem if you have a PC, but the video player software that comes with Mac’s can’t play them. And no one that I could find was hosting the file for streaming purposes.
While I’m on the subject of that download file, Dragged Into Sunlight’s web site is at this location. Behind the “Media” tab at that site, you’ll find a link for downloading the file that includes the “Buried With Leeches” video. It also contains a second video file — a montage of photographs accompanying an excerpt from the 19-minute song “Terminal Aggressor”, which the band self-released as an EP on cassette in 2009. The file also includes an mp3 of both “Boiled Angel” and “Buried With Leeches” (two of the songs on Hatred For Mankind) with a brief intro by a radio DJ.
The band have also made a recording of their 3-song live performance in Amsterdam on April 7, 2010, at OCCII available for free download at this location.
But enough with the downloads. The main point of this post is the video for “Buried With Leeches”. Here it is, followed by the video clip for that excerpt from “Terminal Aggressor”.
“BURIED WITH LEECHES”
“TERMINAL AGGRESSOR” (EXCERPT)
DIS NEWS
Dragged Into Sunlight will be appearing at the Maryland Deathfest X, set to take place May 24-27, 2012, at Sonar in Baltimore.
And the latest word about the band’s activities is that they plan to begin recording their next release, Widowmaker, on October 31.
P.S. I’m so fucking proud of myself for figuring out how to host and stream these videos that my tiny head has swelled up to near-normal size. I’m not the most tech-savvy dude, and it took some doing for me to work out how to make this NCS video-stream idea a reality. I had to convert the original Dragged Into Sunlight video files from .wmv (which doesn’t play well with many browsers) to a .flv format (which works with all browsers), and that required getting some conversion software and figuring out how to make it work. Then I had to find a plug-in for the WordPress software that runs this site that would allow me to embed and stream the videos from the high-speed hosting service we use for the downloading of large files.
I did all that, and I tested it on 3 different browsers, and I think it all works. But this is the first time I’ve tried this, so fuck-ups are not only possible but likely. So, if anyone has any trouble getting the videos to stream, let me know — either in a comment or by e-mailing me: islander@nocleansinging.com
I want to make sure this works, because fans of the band ought to be able to see it. And also, y’know, fuck YouTube for taking it down in the first place.
25 Responses to “DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT: THE “BURIED WITH LEECHES” VIDEO SURFACES AGAIN”
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Thanks for going through all the trouble to get this out, it’s very appreciated!
Thanks!
the only thing I got from all of this was….
PENIS! PENIS! PENIS! PENIS!
Apparently, I am just as smart as YouTube.
Penis is in the eye of the beholder.
I would also like to echo Byrd’s sentiment. I’m….sniff…proud of you…sniff…
So…when do can we start to expect to see Genki Genki videos as regular additions to blog posts?
Are you trying to make our facebook likes go backwards again?
It was removed because of nudity? Why is sex so taboo but torture and violence acceptable?
That’s what was truly crazy about what YouTube did. Or maybe they don’t have a “torture and violence” policy and just used the next best thing as the explanation.
It’s strange, because there’s definitely plenty of videos on Youtube with more violence and/or nudity than this one. Belphegor’s “Impaled Upon the Tongue of Sathan”, for example. “Mother North” by Satyricon has the same plot as the Dragged into Sunlight video of a (naked) sacrificial victim being led to a remote location and killed, and the uncensored version is available on Youtube. And the uncensored versions of several Cannibal Corpse videos are available on there as well (hell, the censored versions might even be more violent). I feel like it was probably taken down because it’s actually more disturbing and nauseating than every Cannibal Corpse video combined. I mean, I don’t think that Youtube was *right* in taking it down, especially because they’re hiding behind the weasel excuse of “nudity”. But I think it’s probably likely that the thing made their skin crawl, and so they took it down.
I think you must be right. There’s really no other explanation that makes a lick of sense. But I can certainly see how it would make their skin crawl. Mine is still crawling, but unable to escape.
dragged into sunlight, what a fucking great band, so glad to see this video back online, the music is just so raw, it has all the rawness of hardcore, all the tone of doom, all the harshness of black metal and all the brutality of death metal, brb i’ve got to go and headbutt a wall.
Well said (from one wall-headbutter to another).
a killer return!
Well, the video plays for me, but I’m having some issues with it.
Internet Explorer 8 has no problem playing the video as it’s supposed to. However, both Opera and Chrome (which I’ve never really used before, it was on the laptop when I got it yesterday) open the video in a new tab when I click the play button on jwplayer. I don’t know if it’s something on my end (still setting the laptop up how I want and trying to learn its quirks) or if there’s something else going on that I’m unaware of.
Well, just my luck, Opera and Chrome aren’t among the 3 browsers I tested this on (IE, Safari, and Firefox), so I don’t immediately have an explanation. I picked the JWPlayer because they promised complete cross-browser functionality. But I’ll do some poking around and see what i come up with.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at this kind of stuff, I’ve seen jwplayer on many other sites. To be your favorite kind of honest, it could very well be a problem at my end, but I find it odd that Opera and Chrome aren’t playing by the rules with this. Sure, sometimes IE has issues (and not just because it’s from Microsoft, mind you), but playing .flv has never be an issue where there’s a notable difference between browsers. Pages might look different in place, some features may not work quite the same, but streaming media in a common format shouldn’t have complications.
It could be that this is a fresh install of Windows 7 (factory restore before I bought it) and that I haven’t gotten everything set to run how it is on my desktop, but it’s still rather odd how the video’s playing in a separate tab. Maybe I’ll have a better idea if I hit up some other sites that have videos (hosted or otherwise) in varying formats and players to see what happens,
I’m learning this stuff for the first time, and it may be that I have to vary the default settings for the JWPlayer. I just used the basic set-up, with no captions or fancy skins or anything else, because I was too scared I’d fuck something up. I’ll spend some more time this weekend. I may even figure out how to make the stream embeddable so other sites can use the video, like you can with a YouTube clip.
Seriously twisted band and one hell of a fucking nasty video. I actually feel sick after this.
It makes me sick to watch it, too. In fact, I’ve only made it through the whole thing twice. But in a truly horrid and disturbing way, the pairing of these images and the music is a genuine artistic achievement, imho.
You know that the Video for Buried with leeches is an excerpt from a film named “Begotten”. Also used by Silencer in their video for “Sterile Nails And Thunderbowels” and from time to time you can find it on You Tube, but they use to remove it. Today I found it with spanish lyrics…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WrmKHJYj-k&feature=related
Thanks a bunch for this info. I had no idea where the visuals for the DIS video came from. It suits the music quite well.
Here you have a link to the full movie “Begotten” quiet twisted…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubfkP1rweBo&feature=related
I don’t know if I can watch an hour+ of this, but it’s good to include the link in this post. And for the sake of completeness, here’s an article about the movie from The Font of All Human Knowledge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begotten
hehe, I understand…I did watch it and it´s sure strange…
You might be able to upload it again on youtube now since the whole Begotten movie is on there too.