Monday, December 27, 2004

Ill Nino - Cleansing

This is a pretty good stadium live performance video. You get to see not only the band jamming on stage (to the original live audio), but they also include fun clips of the band interacting and meeting with fans as well as their backstage antics. Clips from various other performances are also included, and are all edited together nicely. This is a nice simple and fun video that is ok to check out.
I would recommend checking out the band in general since they do a nice job of mixing latin rhythms with hardcore beats.
Video Rating: **

GWAR - War Party

Long before Slipknot made masked costumed metal cool, GWAR were shocking audiences everywhere with their weird antics and wild stage shows.

From the lyrics they seem to be protesting against Bush and the war just like everyone else is now a days. At least GWAR make it sound fun. The video starts out as a breaking news story as GWAR's War Party have won the election and are now jamming in times square! That's pretty much it for most of the video, other the news report type screens with the little info bar at the bottom of the screen with some hilarious "news" like the NASDAQ soaring after the War Party won the election and invade the White House! There are also some scenes of vocalist Oderous Urangus bashing his minions over the head with clubs and sledgehammers.

Overall, a pretty fun video from the original modern day masked shock rockers. If you've never seen them before or are interested to check them out, then I highly recommend this video.
Video Rating: ***1/2

MachineHead - Days Turn Blue to Grey

This is a REALLY good video from MachineHead, one of my all time favourite bands.

The video features the band jamming around a "family tree", interlaced with chalk style animated scenes and real ones of two kids and their drunk, abusive father. As the video proceeds, the band leave the tree, and the father is suddenly standing there. The kids (now teens) show up and start screaming the lyrics along with Rob Flynn as more teens mosh around them and the band jamming.

This is a really great song and video by MachineHead as they continue to rebound after two less then stellar albums. I highly recommend checking this one out.
Video Rating: ****

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Lacrimas Profundre - Amber Girl

These guys are serious Type O Negative/HIM rip-offs, but they do a good job of it at least! Wouldn't surprise me if they were Finnish either.

The video sees the band jamming in an attic surrounded by incomplete mannequins. Not really spooky or anything, and they do a good job of cutting from the singer to the rest of the band jamming their parts.
The song itself is really bordering on being a total HIM rip-off. From the heavy tones of the music, right on down to the heavy low tone of the singer's voice with the almost Type O Negative Peter Steele lip-curl smirk.

If you like HIM and TON, you should definately check this out. If you hate rip-offs out of fear that a hundred bands that sound the same are gonna suddenly pop up cause HIM sold a million records, then you should know what to do.
Video Rating: ***

Six Feet Under - Dead and Buried (Living Life in the Grave)

My fav death metal band return with probably their best video yet!

Six Feet Under fronted by former Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes for years have been making some of the most brutal death metal tracks anywhere, but seemed to have had a change of heart in the past few years as they've switched from singing about death and gore to joining the ranks of many other bands and singing against the war in Iraq. Some might scream "Sell Out!", but I don't think it matters as long as the music is good.

This simple video sees the band jamming in what looks like a dark abandoned warehouse, with shots of some old lady and some kids watching news reports and footage of the war going on. Simple, yet effective and matches the slow, heavy grind of the song.
The lyrics are the usual cookie monster growled flare, where you need to listen to the song a few times to figure them out, but at least SFU aren't as bad as Broken Hope, who to this day I still can't figure out what the guy was barking even while reading the lyric sheets!

Like I said above, this is probably the best SFU video I've ever seen so far, and highly recommend it.
Video Rating: ****

Monday, December 20, 2004

New DVD

I just picked up the new Godsmack DVD, Changes, yesterday. I'll post up a review of it soon when I get done watching it. Also interesting to note concert DVDs by KoRn and 311 are also available locally now. But what I want to know is how the heck 311 could put out a live DVD claiming to have performances of all their hits on it, but they left "Down", their best song EVER, off the playlist???

Friday, December 17, 2004

Rammstein - Ohne Dich

If I could understand German, I'd probably understad why Rammstein chose this as their 3rd single instead of the more hard hitting tracks like Reise! Reise! or Moskow. I would really like to see them release Los as a single too.

Anyways, this is a LONG video, going about 6 minutes, and features the band on a perilious mountain climbing expedition. As the band make the climb, suddenly vocalist Till's line snaps and he falls down a bit before landing on a flat slab, but his leg is broken! They then kinda waste about a minute with the dramatics as we see the band huddled together in a tent as a snowstorm rages outside and they try to nurse Till.
The next morning, with injured member and all, the continue the climb and reach the top triumphantly in a touching moment, with them viewing the sunset to end the video.

I love Rammstein videos, but this is probably the most boring one I've seen since Mutter, and the fact that it goes long doesn't help much either. They definately could do better as they have an album full of great songs they could make videos for.
Video Rating: **

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Damageplan - Save Me

I think this was actually their first or second single.
The video starts out with vocalist Patrick Lachman strapped to an interogation chair surrounded my small mirrors around his face, and switches between shots of him singing on the chair to shots of him with the rest of Damageplan jamming in a dark space, with eventual shots of them surrounded by mirrors.
As the video progresses, we see the singer of the band burying a body in the rain, and the body then rises from the grave and it turns out to be the vocalist himself! "Save me from Myself" indeed!
There were alot of close-ups of Dimebag Darrell here as he tore up the song on his trademark Washburn guitar. The riffs in the song itself actually sound like they were borrowed from Primer 55's "This Life" from way back in 2001, but with the signature Dimebag flare added.
This is a simple, but very good video, and after watching it and hearing the track, I really wished that I had bought the CD when it came out all those months ago. Now I can't even find it anywhere!
Video Rating: ***1/2

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

A Perfect Circle - Imagine

From the new album "iMOTIVe", Maynard James Keenan returns with A Perfect Circle to deliver their most political album to date as they join the ranks of many other bands by protesting the war in Iraq with song. The album itself is actually a compilation of mostly famous anti-war songs from the past.

If you haven't guessed yet from the last sentece, Imagine is a cover of the famous ex-Beatle/hippie John Lennon. I didn't think it was possible to make this sad sounding song anymore depressing then it already is, but Maynard did it! The way the song is played and sung is VERY gloomy, almost hopeless sounding, and sounds more like Tool than the direction Maynard usually takes with A Perfect Circle.
And the video itself is again reminiscent of Tool, whereby you don't see the band, but it catches your interest the way they use all kinds of graphics and news footage to match the lyrics of the song. They even have one of those little information bars going accross the bottom of the screen so you think your watching a news report or something, but if you pay attention to the news bar, it's alot of weird and sometimes funny anti-war stuff being spun along.

Like I said before, this is a very gloomy and depressing video, but the strong message of the original song is still there. Definately worth checking out.
Video Rating: ***3/4