Since we posted the video for Machine Head's "Halo," various readers have written in complaining about the edit, which cuts the song down from nine minutes in length to just about five. In response, Robb Flynn has written a lengthy explanation of the band's decision. He also explains what the band and director Mike Sloat were trying to accomplish with the clip and what happened during the shoot.
I write to you from the surprisingly frigid city of Madrid, Spain, where we are on tour as direct support to Metallica right now (woo-f--kin'- hoo!!!), and when we got the news about our video being premiered this Saturday, we were super stoked, to say the least!!! We are especially proud of this video, as it challenged us creatively and we feel it is completely unique to anything out there right now in metal or in mainstream music.
We worked on the video with our longtime collaborator and partner in crime, director Mike Sloat (who has done the last six videos for us as well as our DVD "Elegies"), and the concept this time was basically to make the artwork to our latest album, The Blackening, come to life. We wanted all of the footage to look like the metal carvings that appear in the artwork of our album, so everything -- storyline, performance footage, and artwork -- was to appear animated in that crude carving style; there there would be no "real" footage. We kinda wanted it to be like an evil and satanic version of the A-ha video "Take On Me" -- but, uh...not really.
Our friend Dean Modino at Modino Media Design was able to take these very crude, one dimensional metal carvings, bring them to life and give them some motion. He did a f--king killer job!!! While it was/is a massive bummer that we had to edit our glorious nine minute epic down to a puny five minute epic, there we're several factors that played a role. Basically, doing a nine minute video is like doing two videos, and financially as well as logistically, it became a nightmare. So it got chopped!! We f--king dig the s--t out of it, though, and while it pains us more than anyone to have to remove four minutes out of our song, the video turned out f--king sick!!!!!!!! We know you guys are gonna really dig it, because we really dig it, and you all know the meticulously high standards we hold ourselves to.
The story is pretty intense and we got a bunch Machine Head fans involved for the crowd scenes, some kids from our message board (The Frontlines) and even some young MH fans that live down the street from me who are big metalheads, and have just started their first garage band! The evil bishop in the video is played by none other than our very own bassist Adam Duce's dad, Mr. Ron Duce! He did an awesome job portraying the evil tyrant, and his in-character rants are now the stuff of legend!!!
Again, I can't tell you how f--king stoked we are about how well this turned out, so stay up late, stay tuned, crack open a beer, fire up a joint, and enjoy, f--kers!!
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