This year seems to be the Incredible/Horrible B-videogame awakening. What with DC’s most iconographic heroes somehow spilling into the ultra-violent world of Mortal Kombat (Link), this trend is equal parts alarming, baffling, and amazing.
Here is the trailer:
Now, I know what you are thinking. Why is he in the desert? Why is he killing a bunch of people? How did one of the worst games ever made get a sequal? How did 50 Cent get an action/adventure game?
Well, here is an answer to SOME of those questions (Link).
…what’s inspired the title is, 50 and G-Unit are putting on a sold-out performance somewhere in a fictional Middle Eastern setting. This is where the ‘blood on the sand’ comes in. They put on the performance; the people are pleased, but the concert promoter stiffs them and doesn’t give 50 and G-Unit their payment.
So, of course, 50 isn’t going to leave until he gets paid, so he hassles the concert promoter, [saying] if he doesn’t come up with the money now, there will be consequences. And instead, the promoter offers him a very valuable gift - something that’s valuable to this particular country - a diamond encrusted skull.
So 50 gets the skull, and as he’s about to leave this war-torn country, when they’re ambushed and the skull is taken. They escape the ambush, but they’re without the skull. So 50’s motivated to get what belongs to him. So basically, throughout the game, he’s trying to track these people down and find out who they are and why he was ambushed.
Here is what confuses me. Is the 50 Cent in this game supposed to represent the real 50 Cent? Or some kind of strange Earth Prime 50 Center where everything is different? Last time I checked, don’t international super stars book concerts through agents and managers? I assume that musicians on his level tend to get paid in advanced, or through some kind of electronic exchange, and not after a gig in cash. And, if for some reason they don’t get paid, don’t they have high-power lawyers to make someone’s life hell instead of guns?
On another note: Do Middle Eastern counties, often strict Muslim nations, celebrate the over-the-toppness of American Hip-Hop enough to draw a big enough venue for a concert for an international superstar? Isn’t the media in these nations so tightly controlled that a CD with enough vulgarities in it to earn a Parental Advisory wouldn’t even be let into their nation?
How did 50 Cent gain the experience to take down potentially military trained, possibly terrorist trained soldiers? Isn’t the fact that 50 Cent is so successful at doing this a little insulting to OUR military forces across the Middle East who put their actual lives on the line every day?
So, instead of getting paid, he gets a special treasure of the land. And it gets stolen. Is 50 Cent so materialistic that he has to kill for a treasure that has no value to him other than a form of payment? No nostalgia, or national or ethnic pride. When do musicians, who make the majority of their money from concerts and merchandise except items on barter for payment? If the skull is so important, can’t he get one made for him again with all of his previous millions?
This game makes my head hurt just thinking about it…and yet…I must play it.
As a presenter at this conference, and viewing Steven’s presentation, I can firmly say that Warren Ellis’s blog post attracted asian goth ladies from the surrounding area. Well, at least one. Well, at least one.
While my drunken word of mouth around town got nothing.
More on this conference later, after I fly back home.
Set to the song “Bridges” by Neurosis, this experimental music video explores the remains of Bethlehem Steel, which at one point was the worlds largest steel plant. Now slowly decaying and rusting. This film takes the viewer where few people have explored, inside the walls of this surreal steel mill. Great band!
I don’t know what is cooler, personally, the fact that J. gets noticably pissed when Letterman’s band tries to do an out of place solo in the song, so he completely destroys him moments later in an albeit sloppy but superb moment of rock and roll revenge, or the fact that Murph is standing at his drums the whole time just pound the fuck out of everything he sees.
Any metal video that is setup to inspire children into forming anti-authority mobs of zipper hoody wearing, mask toting badasses against the big brother of the corporate, consumer, and political worlds out of their control is automatically frustrating in my book. Especially since their form of protest just somehow turns into a street team promotional stunt for the very band that made the video in the first place (which in itself is a form of marketing).
What is strange is that this video has such a great review on youtube.
Let’s dissect this first scene. A Swedish metal band decides to film a video somewhere in the deserts of America, where magical flames shoot out from behind the drummer. A little emo boy stands downtrodden and walks home after getting made fun of all day at school. And enter Angela Gossow – who everyone shits bricks over because she is a woman singer in a metal band, but apparently no one has ever heard of Crysis. She brandishes a megaphone, emblazoned with what, at first glance, resembles an anarchy symbol, but has been skewed into a logo for the band (don’t forget to buy their records, kids!). The boy strips off his My Chemical Romance sweater in disgust.
A lot of metal bands lately have chosen to do videos focusing on anti-conformity messages. But, all these people are non-conforming by wearing band merchandise, talking on their cell phones which are probably covered under some sort of “family plan†and supporting a mediocre band. We get some glimpses of a big city, probably metaphorically referring to New York’s Wall Street, because the shot itself would have been too expensive, even if this video was funded by Hot Topic teeshirt sales.
We also get the first shots of the little group of corporate sponsored anarchists huddling around in shadowy warehouses spray painting a van and running around. Now, color me stupid, but I thought the whole van customizing scene died when the A-Team was canceled. The disgruntled teens drive across bridges, hop over objects, and run past shipping containers. They hack some PIN codes and spray paint some cameras.
In case you were trapped in the groove of the song, and haven’t noticed, no where do they show or mention what we are supposed to be rebelling against, and at no point are we even informed as to what is so bad to cause the people to form some sort of gang in the first place. I think the video infers that one of the teenage boys (yeah, I think they’ve all been boys at this point. Girls need not apply) hacked the satellite by entering a room and turning a dial (which doesn’t actually explain why the video was distorted to look like it was hacked before the people actually hacked the feed to display it). The band’s video (not the actual video we are watching, but the one of just them playing a song in a desert, without electricity to power their guitars and amps, let alone broadcast equipment for the feed in question) plays on jumbo screens for everyone to watch. Just in time for a bitchin’ guitar solo.
This band of brothers has succeeded, and walks away triumphantly, without their encumbering sweaters,
I remember when 1349 first came out, I was pretty excited over the deliberate aesthetic choice of the band to recreate an old school black metal feel - in sound, content, and wardrobe. And, with the legendary drummer Frost on board, what isn’t there to be kvlt about?
Well, that’s easy to say when you listen to the band, but once again, things just don’t translate into the cooperate world of the music video. I mean, why would a black metal band want a music video at all? Where is it going to air, MTV? I don’t want to say sell out, but you know…
About the video itself, it is an absolute dizzying affair to watch. With a jump cut every second of the video, nothing stays in focus or in frame. I think the director wanted to match the speed of the band itself, but you literally can’t see anything.
There also appears to be some sort of Asian nurse throughout the video, who they sometimes have a one second shot of, and who is sometimes holding a scalpel. But, I don’t think they ever show any flesh being sculpted - in fact, I think I saw more generic industrial equipment throughout the video than I did any sort of barbaric surgery.
Ravn also has some seriously cheeseball hair. What a curly haired fancy boy. His locks strewn about with a devil-may-care attitude, as he screams into the camera. Basically any video where I’m watching the singer looking at me is a bad video. The fourth wall cannot be broken.
But, for all the talk of Satan, and hailing from the regions of Norway, there certain aren’t any visual references to anything Satanic or Scandinavian. I think I saw someone turning up a volume dial at one point, not an old man in a wooden shack, surrounded by snow, slicing up bodies and forming new meat puppet abominations for him to have sex with. No flesh sculpting, no cutting instruments, no bodies, in fact. And with a closer visual relationship to Asian horror, the band loses and sort of cohesion to their music.
Welcome to Tim’s first in a series of weekly video posts with the theme: Bad Metal Videos.
Why Tuesday? Well, its one of my days off, for starters. Also, it makes things just a little bit less alliterative.
Pretty much all metal videos are bad. Period. I’m going to show you why.
While one cannot ignore the power of the pagan villagers rebelling against the insurgency of the Christians, one also cannot ignore the poorly synced vocals with Henri Sorvali trying desperatly to look cool on video. Personally, all videos where someone is looking into the camera bother me, but he’s trying so hard to sync up with what is being heard that it is almost painful.
Thor’s hammer hangs ominously in the background, while Nordic runes cover their amps. But personally, it looks like Styrofoam and masking tape. Granted, a Finnish viking metal probably can’t afford too much more than that. One guess as to what a Viking Metal band does spend their money on…
The fight scenes are little more than LARP fodder, with poor quality costumes, anachronistic haircuts, and a narrative that is basically a low-budget copy of the low budget video for Bathory’s One Rode to Asa Bay.
Also, I don’t think any of their instruments are plugged in.
I’m the true new gonzo reporter, stealing wifi will standing in front of a gas station. A few quick words: I can’t take any more shrines and when I get to Osaka tomorrow I’m just going to pass out for a full day. A day where I don’t have to travel on trains and be stated at all day, or a day without walking around to fucking shrines or plots of land that 300 years something marginal happened. Also I found out the little swirly circle of fish paste in ramen is called Naruto, which is why Naruto loves ramen and his symbol is a swirl. God fuck like 3 years of in jokes I’ve been missing. On a side note my capsule had the full GTO manga series, and it really gets a lot richer once you’ve been to Japan and realize Onizuka is always wearingthe toilet style sandals…hilarious.
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