Monday 31 October 2011

RM - Parkway Drive Breaking Point Lyrics


As we have two plans for a song to use for our music video (Parkway Drive's Breaking Point and Sunburnt In December's Like A Match To An Arsonist) the group and band members need to be clear on the lyrics of the song and the timings. Here is the post for Parkway Drive's Breaking Point with the timings of lines.


Lyrics [Time]
Black plagues, line a fading sky. [0:36]
A dying world stripped to the bone,
Intoxicated by the madness. [0:44]
Blood weeps from open wounds.

And still the fires rage, [0:48]
Consumed, now chaos reigns.
Our pride dissolved,
The rise and fall,
The breaking point,
Burned and crossed. [0:58]
Lost,
Now immune to all the carnage, [1:05]
We turn upon ourselves.

Within these times of desperation, [1:13]
We are the virus that has infected, [1:18]
To its last.

Nothing is sacred,
Nothing shall be saved, [1:28]
No one shall be spared the horror,
That has yet to come. [1:38]
Destroy and discard, [1:44]
This is all that we know.
Blackened flesh, blistered, [1:51]
Hangs from skeletal frames
Stalking this arid wasteland, [1:58]
Our minds immune to change.

The shreds of morality, [2:04]
Fall by the wayside,
As we are left to ponder, [2:10]
These black box revelations.

In these days to come, [2:18]
In this,
Our final hour,
We will witness the true depths to which,
Humanity can sink. [2:29]
Humanity can sink. [2:41]
We will learn, [3:00]
To suffer.
We will learn, [3:07]
To fail.
And before long, [3:20]
We will beg for the end.

And still the fires rage, [3:25]
Consumed, now chaos reigns.
Our pride dissolved,
The rise and fall. [3:31]
The breaking point,
Burned and crossed [3:36]

Thursday 20 October 2011

A Brief History of Parkway Drive

Parkway Drive are an Australian metalcore band, formed in Byron Bay in the year 2002. Blasting out of Byron, almost as an affront to the serenity of their surrounds, Parkway Drive quickly established themselves as the most formidable force Australian heavy hardcore had ever seen, here's their brief history.


2002 - The band begin as a five piece, with the lineup of Winston McCall on vocals, Luke Kilpatrick on guitar, Ben Gordon on drums and Brett Lagg on base. Their name is taken from the address of the band's first rehearsal area that the drummer owned in Parkway Drive, Byron Bay. The band quickly enlisted Jeff Ling, another local surfer (all of Parkway are surfers and spend a lot of their time away from the band doing this pastime) and began playing shows around their local area.



2003 - The band start recording demos with other bands around the area, principally I Killed The Prom Queen, another local metal band that Parkway were friends with, and they recorded a split EP with them, I Killed the Prom Queen/ Parkway Drive: Split EP and they begin playing more shows once they gain slightly more recognition.



2004 - The band record their first proper EP, entitled Don't Close Your Eyes. It is the first issue from the band and was somewhat of a collector's item, before it was re-issued in 2006, but the latter contained a few more tracks, such as the ones found on their EP with IKTPQ.



2005 - Parkway Drive release their debut album, Killing with a Smile, through Resist Records. It was produced byAdam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage and written by Parkway Drive, while some guest vocals were included. The band also released a video for the single "Smoke 'Em If Ya Got 'Em". It was received very well in Australia's metal scene and established a foothold for the band in the metal market, and began playing tours around the area. Around this time, Parkway started playing more and more shows with more high-profile bands, such as The Acacia Strain and Suicide Silence.



2007 - In early March, the band unveiled two new songs, The Sirens' Song and Carrion, which feature on the then-unreleased album, Horizons. The band began previewing more songs from the forthcoming album on a tour they did in August and October. Once Horizons came out, it was critically acclaimed by both critics and fans alike and was awarded high reviews in the local magazines of the area, and indeed worldwide because Parkway had made a huge global impact by now. In May 2009, Parkway Drive announced that they would be releasing a live DVD and an Australian tour was also announced with August Burns Red and Architects in support of it. Horizons is to date their best selling release, with the album reaching multi-platinum status in Europe.



2010 - Deep Blue - In March 23rd, Parkway began recording the follow-up to Horizons, Deep Blue. It is somewhat of a concept album, detailing the life of a man who is trying to find the truth in a corrupt, decaying city, and it has been dubbed as their heaviest record to date. According to a blog posted on 8 April 2010, Parkway Drive were half finished with rhythm guitars, bass and vocals for the upcoming untitled album. On 17 April 2010, Parkway Drive officially announced that they finished recording the forthcoming album, and added a studio diary video to their Myspace. Videos have since been made for Unrest, Sleepwalker and Karma. On 25 June, Parkway Drive's Deep Blue was released onto the Australian iTunes Store. After four hours since the point of the album being released, "Deep Blue" reached the Second position on the iTunes Album Charts in Australia, with Eminem's Recovery album seizing first position. Deep Blue was released in the United States and Canada on 29 June, now making it available worldwide. After Warped Tour, Parkway Drive began their Australian headlining tour with The Devil Wears Prada, The Ghost Inside and 50 Lions.


Present day - In an interview with NME, McCall discussed a possible 4th album. Winston is quoted as saying, "We've got ideas for this record that are bigger than anything we've done in the past. We're trying to pencil it in, but we want to get in the studio sooner rather than later." The album is set for a 2012 release.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

RM - Research Into the Metalcore Genre

Metalcore

 Metalcore is a subgenre of the two genres hardcore and metal. The genre began in the late 80s, early 90s. The genre gained commercial success in the beginning of the 2000's with bands including Killswitch Engage, Bullet for My Valentine and The Devil Wears Prada.





Bullet for My Valentine

Metalcore is distinguished from other punk metal fusions by its emphasis on general heavy metal characteristics as well as breakdowns. These breakdowns consist of slower, intense passages conducive to moshing. The vocals are normally screamed with the occasional presence of clean vocals during either the chorus or bridge.



Throughout the evolution of the genre it has had phases of crossover thrash, metallic hardcore and melodic metalcore.


Crossover ThrashCrossover Thrash is a form of thrash metal that combines hardcore punk and standard thrash metal. However bands in this genre were more influenced by the hardcore punk genre compared to the thrash metal genre. Throughout this genre inspiration was taken from bands such as Motörhead, and Black Sabbath. These influences carried on through the Metallic Hardcore age. During this genre Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax became popular and are now known as the big four. These four bands are still popular to date and are releasing new material.

Metallica, the biggest band of the big four, have produced an album with Lou Reed entitled “Lulu” this album is going to be released October 31, 2011 worldwide.

After finishing their latest tour for their album “World Painted Blood” Slayer is currently postponing creating a new album until Jeff Hanneman's, the guitarist, condition improves.

Megadeth are still currently touring their latest album “Thirteen”.

Whereas Anthrax have just released their latest album called “Worship Music”. The album was released on September 13.

The Crossover Thrash genre is often confused with thrash-core, which is essentially a faster hardcore punk rather than a more punk-oriented form of metal.


Metallic Hardcore
All Out War
Metallic Hardcore started in 1989 and carried on as a genre until 1995. This let a new wave of hardcore bands emerged included All Out War, Biohazard, Earth Crisis and Vision of Disorder. These bands took inspiration from many of the bands mentioned in the previous paragraph (see Crossover thrash) as well as Septic Death, Samhain, and Joy Division as well as taking some aspects from the death metal genre.





Melodic Metal-core
Avenged Sevenfold
In the early 1990s bands placed more significance on the emphasis of the melody. These bands combined more modern elements of punk and metal. This also included the fuse between the melodic death metal and post-hardcore genre, as well as some of the aspects associated to the emo genre. The first bands incorporate such genres include Avenged Sevenfold, Killswitch Engage and Bullet for My Valentine. These bands have emerged as the most commercially successful artists of metal-core. Unlike metal-core of older generations Melodic metal-core makes use of clean vocals.






Sourced: Wikipedia - Metalcore

Friday 14 October 2011

Research on final band - Parkway Drive - album


Horizons is the second album by Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive, released on October 6, 2007 in Australia and October 9, 2007 internationally. Horizons was produced by Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz and recorded at Zing Studios in Massachusetts.
The album debuted at #6 in the ARIA Albums Chart on October 14, 2007 and #27 in the Top Heatseekers chart. A video has been made for "Boneyards". It also contains the song "Breaking Point" which we are using for our video. 
The track "Feed Them To The Pigs" is named after a line in the Guy Ritchie film Snatch.



Saturday 8 October 2011

Influential aspects of videos of the genre (performance narrative)

There are a lot of bands and also a lot of videos of theirs that are important to research when it comes to making my own video. I am researching various videos of certain bands so I can take influences and aspects to sue in my own video. Here, I will embed a few videos and comment on what themes and tehniques I would aim to replicate and add to my own production.


  1. Before I Forget - SlipKnoT

Slipknot is an American metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. The video for Before I Forget focuses greatly on the band's instruments, rather than the members themselves, with lots and lots of focus on guitars, drums, bass, microphone and samples/keyboards. This is because the band famously wear masks to obscure their appearances and in the video for Before I Forget, they have their masks off so that's the reason of the instrument close-ups. I am aiming to follow a similar technique and use plenty of focus on the performance section of the video. 


    2. Born To Lose - The Devil Wears Prada


The Devil Wears Prada are a Christian metalcore band from Dayton, Ohio. The aspect of performance I want to take from this video is the silhouetted way the band members are portrayed in the video, creating a similar style of narrative enigma to that of the aforementioned video. I think that the way none of the band members are shown properly adds to the creepiness and strange feel of the video. 


    3. Meddler - August Burns Red 


Similar to The Devil Wears Prada, August Burns Red also a Christian metalcore band from Manheim, Pennsylvania. The video for Meddler features the band playing outside under a lighting rig; the primary aspect of performance narrative I want to use in my video is the area that they're playing, which is some sort of corn field outside; the band in my video need to be playing outside as well in order to fit the video's idea better. 


Friday 7 October 2011

Trip to Bradford Museum of Media

Yesterday, both Year 12 and Year 13 media classes at our school traveled to Bradford for the Co-operative film festival, an annual festival which exhibits multiple entries of film from schools all around the country, and sometimes even further. Entries from our year group from last year included Waxed, Wrenched and Sleep Tight, shown in screening one. Another brilliant point during the day was meeting Oli and James Phelps, who played the Weasley twins in the superb Harry Potter franchise. We didn't even know that they were opening the film festival until an hour before we got there. Towards the end of the day, we attended an editing masterclass which used Final Cut Pro on some iMacs, which is quite a step up from the programs we use here which consist of iMovie and Final Cut Express, which is essentially the same but lacking a few features. We learned how to use the chroma key and the green screen techniques, as well as adding titles and backgrounds to videos. 

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Research on the genre(s) of the pitch

Although The Acacia Strain are commonly labelled as "deathcore" due to the hardcore and abrasive nature of their music, the band often refuse to be pigeonholed when it comes genres, and just designate themselves as "heavy". Technically speaking, The Acacia Strain have a dabbled with a number of different genres as they've progressed as a band. These include influences of hardcore, metalcore, metal, death metal, deathcore and others.

Hardcore/Hardcore punk - this genre of rock formed in the early 80's and found mainstream success through a few bands such as Black Flag. most bands followed the traditional singer/guitar/bass/drum format. The songwriting had more emphasis on rhythm rather than melody. Hardcore vocalists screamedchanted and used spoken word poetry. Guitarists started using various different techiques to achieve a heavier sound, such as breakdowns, chugging and tapping, which was previously left unexplored. The guitar sound was almost always distorted and amplified. A lot of hardcore songs were very short. 


Metalcore - metalcore is an subgenre of the two genres of hardcore and metal and the genre began in the early 90's. It is one of the most prominent and popular forms of metal around today, made famous by such bands as Killswitch Engage, Underoath, All That Remains, Trivium, As I Lay Dying, Bullet for My Valentine, and The Devil Wears Prada. It has had a few evolutions, such as phases of metallic metalcore, metallic hardcore and crossover thrash. It has also bred other genres too, such as mathcore which utilises and extreme amount of technical proficiency and complex time signatures, and The Acacia Strain's reluctant genre of deathcore. 


Whitechapel, a popular death metal/deathcore band.
Deathcore - this genre bears many similarities to metalcore, but employs the use of death metal riffs, whilst using a vast amount of dissonant and intentionally abrasive riffs, and often set at an extremely low tuning. The speed can change from very fast-paced drumline to a suddenly slow and lurching time signature and beat per minute, similar to the aforementioned genre. Vocally, low growls and screaming is extremely commonplace, with almost no room for clean vocals. There are also a large amount of breakdowns, comparable to metalcore as well. The Acacia Strain use all these features, thus resulting in them being labelled as "deathcore", and were one of the first bands to use the sound. 


Slayer, a notable death metal band and purveyors of the genre.
Death metal - as subgenres of metal go, death metal, as well as some deathcore and black metal, is the most extreme and also one of the most revered in the world of rock. Much of the style of branches of metal emerge from this genre, notable for its shugging guitars, blast beat double-bass drumming, and growled vocals. The tempos are often extremely fast and the tunings are regularly low, although sometimes not as low as some deathcore guitars. It emerged in the 1980's and was made famous by bands such as Slayer, Kreator, Celtic Frost, Deicide and Carcass, and cemented the genre and has since spawned a huge amount of subgenres, some of which are listed above. 





Tuesday 4 October 2011

Research on the band - The Acacia Strain

The Acacia Strain are an American extreme metal band from Chicopee, Massachusetts, USA, founded in 2001. The band have undergone a large amount of lineup changes since their inception, although their current lineup consists of -

Vincent Bennett - Vocals
Daniel 'DL' Laskiewicz - Guitars, production and programming
Jack Strong - Bass
Kevin Boutot - Drums


n.b - DL has recently been away from touring whilst taking care of his family, so the band have employed two guitarists to replace him on a temporary basis for touring.


The band have released a substantial discography since they begun, among some old EP's and demos with other bands, their discography comprises of;
  • ...And Life Is Very Long (2002)
  • 3750 (2004)
  • The Dead Walk (2006)
  • Continent (2008)
  • Wormwood (2010)
The Acacia Strain have also made a few videos for each album, aside from their initial effort. The videography of the band include;
  • Smoke Ya Later (2004)
  • 3750" (2005)
  • Angry Mob Justice (2006)
  • Skynet" (2009)
  • The Most Known Unknown (DVD, 2010)
  • The Hills Have Eyes (2010)
  • The Impaler (2011)
From left to right: ...And Life Is Very Long, 3750, The Dead Walk, Continent, The Most Known Unknown DVD, Wormwood.




Reviewers and critics have described the band as utilizing "a bone-crushing rhythm section, apocalyptic samples, and a unique triple-guitar assault to deliver their signature blend of hardcore, noise, and death and doom metal. A recent review of Wormwood described the album as "an inelegant and unstoppable juggernaut fueled by memories of the unchecked aggression unleashed on the world by the likes of Sepultura and Pantera." The band's bassist, Jack Strong, describes their music as hardcore-influenced metal. Although the band is sometimes classified as deathcore, lead vocalist Vincent Bennett has gone on record to say that deathcore "sucks" and that "if anyone calls us 'deathcore' then I might do something very bad to them." Written by lead vocalist Vincent Bennett, the band's lyrics generally center around misanthropy and nihilism. Bennett employs misogynistic and sexually deviant imagery in his lyrics, but usually only as metaphors to help get his points across while keeping the songs' overall meanings open for interpretation.

Monday 3 October 2011

Media Pitch [Draft 1]

Here is an initial draft of my video for the pitch. 



Here is a download link for the song as well. http://www.mediafire.com/?t6it9gnjzz0f62v

Saturday 1 October 2011

Pitch update

I have decided with my teacher that my initial song idea for my pitch, The Carpathian by The Acacia Strain contained too many expletives and the lyrics were way too dark and somewhat...Satanic to use for my pitch. Instead, I have decided to switch the song to Kraken by the same band, which contains no swearwords at all, which was actually hard to find because most of the band's lyrics are often very explicit, yet I still want to do an Acacia song because the stuff they write would fit perfectly with my video idea; the lyrics for Kraken are self-explanatory, and is about a man coming face-to-face with the legendary Kraken monster; the lyrics go well with my idea of someone being chased through a forest by an unseen monster, possibly a demon.