Film Review: Rosetta’s History Carved In Stone with Audio/Visual

I had heard very, very little about Rosetta before watching Audio/Visual. I’d have considered myself much more familiar with the Rosetta Stone than Rosetta the band. But what does a good documentary do? It informs (and doesn’t get phased out by pawnshop shows on the History Channel.) Because of Audio/Visual I’m back to being a metalhead rather than an archaeologist.

Audio/Visual starts off with a rather foreboding line from vocalist Mike Armine about the band’s former label, Translation Loss Records. “If I had known then what I know now, I would have never signed to [Translation Loss] for anything because I lost two really important people in my life over paperwork,” Armine says with an obvious emotional weight on his shoulders. Armine was close friends with the owners of Translation loss before the signing, but the relationship crumbled when Rosetta didn’t receive money they were promised, and that inspired Rosetta’s decision to record everything on their own.

The film does a great job of giving you a feel for what it’s like to record with Rosetta. It shows a lot of the band’s character, and seeing the DIY “fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves” attitude work so well just warms my dead little heart. Recording their own albums and letting fans pay what they want ended up allowing them to recoup their costs quickly, and it let them keep their creative powers all to themselves. It worked so well with 2013’s The Anaesthete that the album paid for itself in 24 hours, and Rosetta decided to employ the pay-what-you-wish model again for 2015’s Quintessential Ephemera.

One of my favorite things about a band documentary is when it makes me feel like I could sit down with the entire band, drink a beer and hang out. Not all bands are like that, but Audio/Visual paints the guys in Rosetta as enjoyable, down-to-earth dudes. It makes a band much more likeable. Audio/Visual gets you right up there with Rosetta and by the end of the film, you feel like you know these guys.

So what is there to make of all this? Audio/Visual is a great documentary about an awesome band. If you dig Rosetta, you’ll dig this. If you knew nothing about Rosetta, you’ll still dig it and you’ll be a fan after watching.

Audio/Visual is out now. It’s available for purchase on DVD and digitally, and available to rent for just $2.99 here.