CINEMETAL ROUND-UP: NEW VIDEOS FROM VANISHER, VREID, AND A BUNCHA BANDS WHOSE NAME DOES NOT START WITH THE LETTER “V”
Before we begin today’s edition of “Cinemetal Round-up,” I’d like to address a comment left by the reader who calls himself “GoingDeaf?” after the last round-up:
“I find it hard to believe that these are the BEST new videos you have at your disposal. I’m all for shitting on bad bands with bad videos, but there HAS to be something of value for you to mix in from time to time for this column. It’s more fun to be a curmudgeon, sure, but balance can be good as well.”
GoingDeaf?, I gotta tell you, if I only posted these when there was “something of value to mix in,” I’d only post two or three of these a year. I post the videos I’m sent via press releases, or see on other metal sites. I’m not sitting on good videos just for the sake of being a curmudgeon; good videos do get made, but they’re very, very few and far between. So, uh, y’know, feel free to just not read these columns. Sorry, bud.
And with that out of the way, let’s watch the crap currently passing for metal videos.
First up today we have Vanisher’s video for “The Architect,” which debuted on Noisecreep. It’s pretty standard metal video fare, but it’s not completely fucktarded, which is more than I can say for 99.9% of all videos I see these days.
Next is “The Sound of the River,” from Vreid. I know that there are people out there who really like Vreid, but I am not one of them. The vocals sound like a robot which has been programmed to sound like a black metal singer, and the music just seems so same old same old to me. But the video looks okay, so, y’know, they’ve got that going for them.
Next we have Stigma’s “The Undertaker.” See, now, this is what I’m talking about, guys — this video clearly didn’t cost a million bucks, and it’s not the most original metal video you’ll ever see, but, clearly, some thought went into it. Most or all of the cuts occur on the drum beats, which shows that the editor was actually paying attention to the song and thinking about how the images could reinforce the music and vice versa, and the cinematography has real energy behind it. Simple, but it works. But such a level of care is too much for even most of the simpletons who make these videos, I guess.
I’m posting Coldspell’s “Heroes” mostly because I somehow had no idea that Rob Halford had taken a side gig playing synths for these dudes. I didn’t even know Halford played synths, I just thought he sang and cruised on his motorcycle — but, no, he also tickles the ivories for the band that is single-handedly keeping smoke machine companies in business. And it’s really good of Rob to give something back like that, y’know?
I think Six Reasons to Kill’s video for “My Bitterness” is really interesting, because it apparently takes place in a world entirely populated by deathcore dudes. The delinquents horsin’ around on the street? Deathcore dudes. The guys who accidentally hit one of ’em with their car? Deathcore dudes. The girl who kicks the one guy out of the apartment later? A deathcore dudette! I’m surprised there’s no scene where a doctor in a sideways baseball cap performs surgery, and then a judge in gym shorts sentences the other fellas for vehicular manslaughter. It’s like the band couldn’t afford actors, so they just used their friends, which is fine — but why didn’t they ask any of those friends to not look like they just left an Emmure show?
I’m can’t believe Attackhead’s (technically NSFW) video for “Make Me Suffer” is real. It’s a bunch of vintage bondage clips intercut with the laziest performance footage I have ever seen in my life. The camera is completely stationary and for some reason the band is in a high school gym, like, a million miles away, but that’s cool ’cause at least the focus is soft. The fucking focus is soft. They now make digital cameras which will literally focus for you, but, no, this band hired the one idiot who couldn’t get the focus right. Jesus Harold Christ.
And, finally, we have The New Black’s clip for “The King I Was.” I once went to a bar mitzvah where the kid had a booth and you could go in and make your own music video, and this is kinda what said video would look like. Only the videos we made were way better, ’cause we didn’t use a song from fucking Re-Load. Yeah, that’s right, this song isn’t even good enough to have been on the original Load. Oy.
-AR
