Every month, Decibel scribe Shane Mehling reviews the four videos that appear in the monthly metal mag. under “Decibel’s Clips of the Month at Metal Injection.” This month, watch picks from Napalm Death, Marduk, Down & a classic clip from At The Gates
Napalm Death – “Smash a Single Digit”
So, this cartoon is like, a dude escapes from the new Napalm record cover, and then they tear out his tongue and rip off his face, and he goes on a conveyor belt and there’s a lever he has to… Listen, the video’s like 90 seconds long and pretty much all it’s saying is that we’re drones—featureless automatons who exist solely to perpetuate the continued evils of capitalism until we outlive our usefulness and are swallowed back into nothingness. But what I’m more interested in is why they only did a cartoon drawing of Barney singing. Was Shane Embury’s bushiness too costly to render?
Marduk – “Frontschwein”
Maybe you’re expecting me to make some cracks about Marduk being fully back into pushing a certain kind of controversial imagery, but this time I’m honestly nazi-ing it. Anyway, drummers almost always get the short end of the music video stick, considering they have to sit there and play while everyone else can pretty much just go nuts and fake their way through it. But the Marduk drummer must have seriously pissed the other guys off, because the whole video has him standing there, banging on a little drummer boy tom. And the worst part is he seems kind of into it. Who hurt you, Marduk drummer?
Down – “We Knew Him Well”
If you want an idea of how little happens in this video, I’ve been struggling for an angle on how everyone has beards. So, yeah, it’s this grainy footage of them playing in a basement, looking older by the minute, and occasionally there are little pieces of paper that have some of the lyrics written in pen. It’s super shoddy in sort of an endearing way, I guess. I saw another video they did for this record, and there was like pentagrams on fire and corpses and girls with black shit coming out of their eyes. Why couldn’t I have reviewed that video instead of trying to read Pepper Keenan’s shirt and hoping it says something funny?
CLASSIC CLIP: At the Gates – “Blinded by Fear”
See, I remember this. It’s been a long time, but I remember this video. I remember Tomas lip-synching the intro sample. I remember the peek at his nipple ring because he’s not wearing a shirt. I remember thinking how uncomfortable letting those red, burlappy dreads rub on your bare back all day might feel, and I even remember seeing him sing through one of those old-timey mics like Weiland in “Plush.” But what I most certainly did not remember was a girl, uh, riding an electric grinder and flashing looks of ecstasy as sparks shoot into the air. Was that digitally added for the special edition or something?
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