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]

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.

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

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.

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 - Born to Lose on MUZU.TV

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. 

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. 

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 screamed, chanted 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. 

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.

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

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.

Media Pitch

The Carpathian - The Acacia Strain 

My media pitch is a music video exhibiting both a performance cut and a narrative concept of The Acacia Strain's "The Carpathian"

The two main aspects of the video will involve my band miming the song with playback so we can mime it in time. We will most likely shoot the footage on Ilkley Moor, most probably a forest so it ties in with the music video's narrative. The performance cut will take up around half of the video's duration, and will cross-cut intermittently with the narrative.

The narrative will feature a girl being chased through a forest in a somewhat archetypal slasher nature, however, the antagonist will not be shown until the very end of the video. The song begins with a slow fade-in introduction which will be impossible to mime, so the music video will begin with a slow fade-in to a forest on a moor, and feature a protagonist sprinting through the undergrowth. The narrative will follow this style throughout the whole video until the end, where they are faced with who they are running from. Whilst this happening, the band while be miming the song through hidden playback. There will be lots of focus on instruments and each individual member, and at important parts of the song, so where there is only guitar, there will be lots of focus on the guitars.

The video will end once the song has ended and the band have finished playing, and are all stood still. The antagonist of the narrative concept will appear as a masked man facing the protagonist, and the video will quickly end.

I believe that this is a refreshing idea and will be fun to shoot, as well as a slightly different musical style to the rest of the ideas circulating. In addition, the idea for the narrative concept fits the song very well, considering the lyrics are extremely dark.

TIOTG update

Since the last post, we have since finished filming each rendition of The Lonely Island's hit "Threw It On The Ground" which included shots on location at one of the group's houses, around school and around our town at various places. We filmed the footage on HD Camcorders, uploaded and shared the footage onto Macs between us and split into pairs and started editing the footage.I have very nearly almost the task, ask the clips are all now in synchronisation with the .mp4 track and all the clips we recorded are uploaded and matching, but not totally, the actual video. All me and my partner have to do now is to mute some of the sound in the clips from the camera, brighten some of the frames and add a few titles and transitions to make the video flow better and look more presentable and professional. 

Film Pitch Finalisation

As a class (13C) we have finally decided on a music video to recreate. The nominations were as follows:

O-Zone's Numa Numa (SamB)

Yolanda's We No Speak Americana (Sophie)

Black Eyed Peas' I've Gotta Feeling (George)

LFMAO's Party Rock Anthem (Hattie)

Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2) (Rich)

Men Without Hats' Safety Dance (Asa)

My choice of Threw It On The Ground by The Lonely Island actually won, and we begin planning next week. There are a lot of points we as a class need to consider when we start planning, such as where to shoot the footage, who plays Samberg, who plays the various vendors and how we recreate the objects being thrown on the ground. All planning, filming and editing (different versions, in pairs) to be completed and submitted by Friday 23rd September, after which we turn to forming coursework production groups.

Music Video Deconstruction 15

Song: Masterchef Synesthesia (Buttery Biscuit Base)
Band: Swede Mason 
Year: 2011

• "Swede Mason" is an underground musical comedian who is responsible for many mash-up videos. In an interview, he said this about himself:
• "I’m a 31-year-old man who lives in London and makes mash up videos."
• "I’m going to try and keep my head as low as I can. I don’t fancy loads of pictures of me being all over the Internet. The idea of being that recognisable scares me a bit if I’m being honest."
• For "Buttery Biscuit Base", Swede Mason said this; "I heard the ‘buttery biscuit base’ bit and thought of something I could do, got started then got stuck and had to shelve it for about a year because I was sick of it. After a while you can’t tell if anything’s good because you’ve watched it so many times, it does your head in. The breakthrough came when I returned to it a few of weeks ago, learnt how to make a wobble base on a youtube tutorial, added the sample and was able to finish it. I don’t know how many man-hours I spent on it but from watching the first episode to finishing the video was well over a year."
• The video samples used are all from a series of Masterchef, featuring Gregg Wallace and John Torode talking about a certain type of pudding they've recently analysed.
• The video mash-up is based on a vaguely simple drum-and bass looping song, made on Swede Mason's computer using Logic Pro.
• The video begins with Wallace stating that he likes the buttery, biscuit base; he then repeats this in a loop until the camera changes to a close-up of him talking about "base knowledge", and a video effect is then applied by Swede Mason to add a cheesy shine to Wallace's head.
• As the scenes switch between Torode and Wallace, Swede Mason begins to use other effects that can be found in Final Cut, such as glints and ripples on the foreground of the videos.
• There are also intermittent close-ups of Wallace, especially when he talks even more about buttery biscuit bases.

Another editing style used by Swede Mason, where Torode has been superficially
imposed onto another shot, where they say the same word together.
 

• Around one minute into the video, there is a massive amount of transitions from shot to shot, between Torode and Wallace in different locations saying the word "but", and SM has turned into a verse in the song. 
• Mason has also used a variety of blurry effects near the end of the video to connote...madness of sorts, at the sight of two people talking so intently about buttery biscuit bases.
• He also uses a zoom-in technique on Final Cut to express some of Wallace's facial expressions even more, as pictured.

• The video ends with an array of mashed-up shots of Wallace and Torode describing various food with words like "sticky, slimy, nutty, toasty, crunchy, crusty, gooey" and Wallace finishing by saying "buttery biscuit base" and Torode fading out to black as he says "oomph!". 

Music Video Deconstruction 14

Song: Icarus Lives!
Band: Periphery
Year: 2010

Guitarist Jake Bowen shortly before the song's intro.
Periphery are renowned in the metal world for their unique
three-man guitar setup.

• Periphery is an American metal band from Bethesda, Maryland (by way of Baltimore, Maryland), formed in 2005.
• Between 2005 and 2009, Periphery worked with vocalists Jake Veredika, Casey Sabol and Chris Barretto, gradually moving from a Meshuggah-influenced sound to a more ambient, melodic sound, with a focus on innovative production.
• Periphery has toured extensively since 2008, supporting artists including DevilDriver, Veil of Maya, Animals as Leaders, God Forbid, Darkest Hour, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Fear Factory,Fair to Midland,and TesseracT.
• This is the second deconstruction I've done for a Periphery video, but it is their first single from their self-titled album.
• I chose this video because it is shot in a very distinctive way of shooting, which I will come onto later.
• The establishing shot is the most important because it sets the style for the whole video; the outer field and background is blurred, and the foreground is filmed behind a layer of glass, with watery effects; the whole video is shot this way, meaning the band members and equipment is blurred, and the most focus is on the glass, which was done by putting a small pane of glass in front of the camera's lens and squirting water onto it. There used to be a video on YouTube detailing the behind-the-scenes aspect of the video, but it has unfortunately been taken down since. 
• There are a few more establishing shots, which show Jake, Misha, Tom and Alex (Guitar, guitar, bass and guitar respectively) posing before starting the song. The camera then switches to Alex who alters a setting on his amplifier (to give the video a real atmosphere of performance), walk backwards, and begin playing the opening riff of the song. 

Guitarist Alex Bois beginning the song, and the water and glass effect is very
visible here.

Throughout this video, Periphery often incorporate their iconic logo
into some parts, such as here, where Spencer (vocals) is also portrayed at a
long shot.

• The song gets in full swing with its extremely heavy and groove-laden intro, and all of the band members are shown playing their instruments, done with close-ups, mid shots and long shots.
• The aquatic side of the video is down to the song's title and lyrics; it is about the flight of Icarus and Daedalus in ancient Greece, and obviously, as the story goes, Icarus perished when the wax wings he was flying with got too hot from the sun, the feathers disintegrated, and he plummeted towards the Icarian (named after him) Sea. The water probably reflects the sea in the lyrics.
• Cameras focus on the instruments during pivotal and important instrumental parts of the song, such as the introduction of the vocals, where the camera focuses entirely on Spencer Sotelo.
• Although much of the performance is out of focus due to it being in the background, there are sections where the zoom and focus change to reveal more of the band member, such as this:  

• These two shots show the camera's change in
  focus when filming a certain part.

• The lighting of the video is very pronounced; there is a massive amount of artificial light when focusing on Spencer. Like the water part of the video, the light would be representing the sun, which caused Icarus's downfall.
• There are also a number of fixed camera angles as the cameras don't move around much; some of them are located at these points; 
• Jake's amplifier
• Through Tom's amplifier
• Below one of Matt's (drums) cymbal stands
• One featuring Misha (guitar) and Spencer
• One just featuring Spencer 
• Alex being shown in a long shot
• Tom being shown behind a logo
• Misha being shown behind a logo (mainly for when he does the guitar solo and the camera needs to be focused on him, pictured)

An example of focus on an instrument, also with a blurred foreground as
opposed to the background which is more regular in this video. This is an
 example of a binary opposite used.

• The lack of focus on the band member's faces may also be made to create a narrative enigma, in the sense that you don't always see their faces clearly.
• After the guitar solo, there is another groovy part, and then the video ends the same way it began; silence apart from the dripping of water; diegetic, as it runs over Periphery's logo. 

Music Video Deconstruction 13

Song: Bleed
Band: Meshuggah
Year: 2008

• Meshuggah is an experimental metal band formed in Umeå, Sweden in 1987.
• Meshuggah first attracted international attention with the 1995 release Destroy Erase Improve for its fusion of fast-tempo death metal, thrash metal and progressive metal with jazz fusion elements. Since its 2002 album Nothing, Meshuggah has used downtuned eight-string guitars.
• They have become known for their innovative musical style, complex, polymetered song structures and polyrhythms. They were labeled as one of the ten most important hard and heavy bands by Rolling Stone and as the most important band in metal by Alternative Press. Meshuggah has found little mainstream success as yet, but is a significant act in extreme underground music.
• "Bleed" is a single from their most recent album, obZen, released in 2008.
• The video begins with a little extra audio that's not in the song, but is added for atmospheric effect. 
• There is a variety of extreme close ups of a clock's mechanics and cogs, as the wind in the non-diegetic sound continues to play.
• The pummelling, heavy main riff of the song begins and the shot changes to a series of extremely surreal opening cuts. There is a man laid on the floor, shown in a mid-shot, then a fisheye lens. 
• There are also some strange close ups of what looks like a cockroach writhing around on the floor. 
• Opening shots such as this give the video an extremely feel, especially as there is no performance aspect to the video at all and is purely narrative concept.
• The camera alternates between this man panicked and afraid, and the bug in the sand, which is really creepy.
• There are often shots of EXTREME extreme close-ups, such as the man's eye. 
• The editing for "Bleed" is very quick, and the shots change every half-second or so, so the viewer is shown more. 
• After these shots, there is a two-shot featuring the man and another man, on all fours in terrifying make up, in a collar behind him. The man on the ground is dressed in traditional "black metal" facepaint that is a big scene in Sweden, where Meshuggah are from.
• The main protagonist of the video is slowly slipping into insanity; this is characterized by the use of distorting the camera lens so it bends the shape and alters his appearance. 
• There are also lots of flashes used in the lighting, especially when the two men are screaming at eachother. Similarly, there are plenty of recurrences of similar shots used throughout.

There is a reference to the album cover of obZen as well, as
this figure is the same as the art.

• The narrative follows the protagonist quickly being taken over by darkness as another strange character turns him into his slave using his mind.
• I think the lighting is the most imporant feature of this video; most of it is dark apart from light focused on the light fixed on the main characters, though there are flashes of red as well to reinforce the song's message and title, which is about a brain aneurysm. 
• The filming style carries on in this hectic way up until the point where the man becomes the mysterious entities' slave, becoming so which is depicted through a series of strobe lights and mid shots. This video focuses heavily on the mindset of insanity. 

Our protagonist exhibiting a massive amount of rage, another key theme of the video.

• The video ends with the man slowly transforming into another one of the creatures that first pursued him; this is shown through another series of flashes and shadows, and the man is shown below his master, almost identical to the design on the album cover.