ALICE IN CHAINS’ INTERACTIVE “ACID BUBBLE” VIDEO: ABOUT AS EXCITING AS ANY OTHER SHALLOW GIMMICK

So you know I love Alice in Chains. You know I’m proud of them for making it work without Layne. You know I love Black Gives Way to Blue, and you should therefore be able to assume to that I love the song “Acid Bubble.”

But I don’t love the interactive video for the song, which allows the viewer to roam freely around the environment of the clip. ‘Cause being able to spin around 360 degrees, Google maps-style, sounds awesome, but the bottom line is this: There’s really nothing that interesting to see. You can move around all you want, but you’ll probably get bored after a minute or so, when you realize your options are still limited to one kinda meh image versus another kinda meh image.

That makes the gimmick roughly equivalent to the recent 3D trend in feature films; even when the 3D looks better than other 3D has looked in the past — as with Avatard — it kinda doesn’t matter, ’cause if the story sucks, all you’re left with is a bunch of pretty pictures.

But this video doesn’t even really have any pretty pictures. So the gimmick is even more shrug-worthy than 3D.

Check out the interactive version of the video here. The non-interactive version is below. Both were directed by Nick Goso.

-AR