CINEMETAL ROUND-UP: NEW CLIPS FROM THRASH OR DIE, WARBRINGER, THE BROWNING, AND CENSURA

I’m gonna put about as much effort into this introduction as Dark New Day put into promoting the release of their new album.

We begin today with Thrash or Die’s video for “Wake Up and Smell the Thrash.” I’m not really familiar with this band, and musically they seem like a pretty standard re-thrash outfit… but this video is friggin’ fantastic. Not only is it done entirely with puppets, but it re-creates a bunch of classic metal album covers, including ones by Anthrax, Dio, Kreator,Autopsy, and Vio-Lence. It’s also totally violent and demented. It is truly a must-watch.

We continue with “Shattered Like Glass,” the new Warbringer video which debuted yesterday on Revolver. It’s not the greatest video ever made or anything, but it is pretty good, and I know it’s good ’cause it actually made me like the song more than I did the first time I heard it. Director Dave Vorhes clearly put a lot of thought into its execution — note that the edits always match up with the music for maximum impact, and the storyline is nicely done, too. Kudos all around on this one.

Next up we have “Bloodlust” from The Browning. I can’t stand the music, and we need a moratorium on metal vids in which the pretty girl turns out to be capital-“E” Evil, especially since now it’s basically being telegraphed from the moment she’s introduced. That being said, this is actually a very well-made video, so, y’know, there’s that.

And we conclude today with”The Voice,” the new Censura clip which debuted on Metal Injection. Again, can’t stand the music… in fact, I think I like this band even less than I like The Browning. And the footage looks pretty, for sure… but it’s hard to see very much of it because a) it’s edited too quickly (and with no thought about how the cuts and the song might work together — compare and contrast the editing in this clip with the editing in the Warbringer video), and b) so much of the performance footage is shot in close-ups so extreme that you might as well be looking at a wall. Oh well.

-AR