Can 10 metal videos in honor of Halloween improve your day? Probably not. But, it's worth a shot.
Director Phil Mucci knows his way around metal videos. He's directed nicely creepy clips for Opeth, High On Fire, Korn, and my mom's favorite, Pig Destroyer. And he was kind enough to create a Top 10 List of Notable Metal Videos to celebrate All Hallows Eve. Dude knows his metal, even if I still think King Diamond should be on this list and would be willing to bicker for hours about what's metal, what's punk and what's alternative... But we can save all that for another day. Maybe for Christmas?
If you're viewing this on the homepage, I saved the embeds for after the jump, otherwise dig in below...
Phil Mucci: There’s a time and a place for heavy metal, and that time and place is Halloween. Too bad metal videos rarely seem to deliver the spooky goods. In the '80s, they seldom consisted of more than smoke machines, colored gels, and hair spray. They didn’t really reach their creative potential until the early '90s, when Fred Stuhr’s stop-motion animated videos broke the mold for good. It’s been slow going since then, but lucky for you, my nocturnal fiends, we’re now living in the Golden Age of metal videos. With broadcast restrictions largely abandoned for the Internet, the monster is finally out of the basement. So why not celebrate the Season of the Witch with this gaggle of hand-picked horrors that are a cut above the rest? If you’re looking for ravenous zombies, grizzly werewolves, marauding kill-bots, or a crowded table of Polish demons eating a naked angel, you’ve come to the right place.
Heavy Metal Halloween Happy Hour - presented by Phil Mucci
Tool "Sober" (Fred Stuhr, dir.) — In an interview in 1993, Kurt Cobain called "Sober" a rip-off of the films of the Brothers Quay, and while he may have had a valid point, that hasn’t stopped this from becoming one of the most influential metal videos in history.
Kyuss "Demon Cleaner" (Fred Stuhr, dir.) — Before Josh Homme was a Queen of the Stone Age, he played lead guitar for the greatest stoner metal band of the '90, Kyuss. "Demon Cleaner" was also directed by Stuhr, who sadly passed away only a few years later, at the age of 30.
The Melvins "The Talking Horse" (Behn Fannin, dir.) — One of the strangest videos in a career full of them, The Melvins tapped Behn Fannin to direct this surrealistic masterpiece, replete with stop-motion monsters, talking buildings, and more black wigs than Bingo Night at an Italian nursing home.
Ghost Brigade "Clawmaster" (Fursy Teyssier, dir.) — Director / animator Fursy Teyssier combines the iconography of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead films with the aesthetic of early Walt Disney to conjure a haunting vision of atmospheric beauty and horror.
Slayer "Criminally Insane" (Bret DeWall, dir.) — You know you’re living in the Golden Age of metal when an online fan creates the greatest Slayer video ever made. Animator Bret DeWall finally delivers what Slayer fans have been waiting a lifetime for, resurrecting a classic track from their seminal album Reign in Blood.
Metallica "All Nightmare Long" (Roboshobo, dir.) — Not my favorite Metallica song by a longshot, but the video by Roboshobo is one for the ages. Soviet-era propaganda films coalesce with animation and live action to create a militaristic zombie apocalypse, the epic likes of which have never been seen.
A Perfect Circle "Weak and Powerless" (The Brothers Strause, dir.) — Directed by the Brothers Strause, ex-Tool singer Maynard James Keenan’s band A perfect Circle carry the torch he lit in the early 90’s with this eerie, sexy ode to creepy crawlers, and the naked women who love them.
Ozzy Osbourne "Bark at the Moon" — (crappy quality, but best I could find online) Yes, there are smoke machines, yes there are colored gels, but there’s also Ozzy Osbourne playing a werewolf in this Hammer-Horror-meets-Hair-Band classic.
Behemoth "Ov Fire and the Void" NSFW (Dariusz Szermanowicz, dir.) — An example of how far metal videos have come, and just how far they can go! Director Dariusz Szermanowicz pulls no punches with Polish death metal titans Behemoth, and the result is one of the most gloriously evil metal videos of all time.
Skeletonwitch "Bringers of Death" — Produced by Adult Swim for their Metal Swim compilation (which brought us the similarly amazing Mastodon puppet massacre video for “Deathbound”), this Skeletonwitch b-side comes fully loaded, with an epic battle between zombie bikers and their mortal enemies, the Furries!
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