CINEMETAL ROUND-UP: NEW VIDEOS FROM OCEANO, BLESSTHEFALL, DAWN OF ASHES, AND STRUCTURE OF INHUMANITY
I woke up this morning and had another visit from the Music Video Fairy! Isn’t that exciting? Let’s see what the bitch left me this time.
First up we have “Weaponized,” Oceano’s first video in support of their sophomore effort, Contagion. First of all, I should be honest and tell you that I watched this video with the sound off. The reasons being a) that I knew the music would be borderline unbearable and b) I can’t understand what the fuck the singer is yelling so the lyrics weren’t gonna help me figure out the “story” or “meaning” of the video anyway. What I failed to anticipate, however, was that I wouldn’t need to be able to understand the lyrics in order to comprehend the video; as they do with their music, Oceano have made a clip so lowest-common-denominator that any simpleton could follow it.
Next up is blessthefall’s new clip for “Hey Baby, Here’s That Song You Wanted.” This is really more like a short film than a music video, as it’s eight and half minutes long even though a quick iTunes search tells me that the song is a good five minutes shorter than that. Theoretically I should be impressed by the ambition of the band, but the record exec in me thinks this was a horrible idea. No one who isn’t already a fan of the band is gonna watch this; even if a non-fan, like, say, for example, ME, tries to watch it, they won’t be able to get through it (I was nearly at the three minute mark when I gave up), because it’s never compelling. It’s just, like, the worst teen movie ever made. So it fails on two levels — it’s a lousy promotional tool and a lousy artistic endeavor.
Next is Dawn of Ashes’ new video, for the track “Transformations Within Fictional Mutation,” which is not yet embeddable, but you can see over at Bloody Disgusting. You may recall that we posted some exclusive behind-the-scenes pics from the shoot for this video awhile back; the clip was made by legendary horror fx guru Robert Kurtzman’s Creature Corps. That alone would probably be enough to win me over, but I also think this band is pretty cool, so I’m gonna give this video an all-around “win.”
Finally, we have Structure of Inhumanity’s clip for “The Ruin.” I don’t have any funny insults for this one, but I also don’t have any real praise. I think the same thing about the video that I do about the song, which is: Everyone involved did a totally respectable job, but it’s just not for me. See? I can be political!
-AR
