Hugh Platt can find something wrong with everything, because he’s a moody little git. Just what is it about Machine Head’s videos that’s gotten him so irked?

The short answer: Yes. Yes, they have.

The long answer: Last week Machine Head released the video for their latest single, ‘Locust’, and it became their most recent entry in their long history of shoddy-looking promo videos for their albums’ lead singles. Just why does Robb Flynn’s band have such trouble producing a promo that doesn’t look like total guff? Let’s investigate.

First of all, let’s check out the video that set me off on this train of thought – the promo video for ‘Locust’:

The saddest thing about Machine Head’s latest video is that you know, just know that the video treatment must’ve looked really good on paper:

“Okay guys, we’ll have you guys playing your instruments in front of a post-apocalyptic skyline, intercut with images of this oncoming locust attack that decimates everything before it. And then, as the song reaches its climax, you all open your mouths, or tear open your chests, and the locusts come pouring out of you! It’ll look moody and devastating and amazing!”

This is a case where not only is the concept just a bit too big for the budget. Whenever ‘Locust’ presents those behind-the-locust shots (like at 2:05), I can’t help but be reminded of the scene from the criminally  unappreciated Dean Learner: Man To Man when Garth Marenghi shows a scene from his (fake) monster movie, War of the Wasps. The animated swarms of locusts are only a few steps above the risible effects of the notoriously awful environmental-disaster “film”, Birdemic. It doesn’t help matters that the “panic acting” of the people being devoured by the plague of insects is as similarly unenthusiastic as those being mauled by that film’s avian invasion.

And then we’ve got the little, almost petty niggles – inconsequential when taken on their own, but adding up to a big case of the something’s-not-quite-right-about-this in the subconscious of your audience. Like the way the too-intense lighting highlights Robb Flynn and co. are performing in front of chromo-key backgrounds, rather than maintaining the illusion that they’re actually jamming in a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s these tiny – almost insignificant – things that gather to erode the overall quality of Machine Head’s videos.

But back to my original hypothesis – that the videos for Machine Head’s lead singles have always looked kind of shitty. Let’s look at the rest of the evidence, shall we?

1) ’Davidian’ from Burn My Eyes.

Let’s start off at the beginning, with the lead single from Machine Head’s debut album. Older Machine Head videos do get something of a pass when it comes to my thery – not only was Roadrunner’s (and Machine Head’s) budget tighter back in the 90s, but videos were also prohibitively expensive to make (far more so than they are today). Couple this with the fact that many, many, many band promo videos of this era were still grossly in thrall with the promo videos Pantera had made for the singles from both Far Beyond Driven and The Great Southern Trendkill, and you’ve got the recipe for one the most unimaginative periods in the history of metal video-making.

I’m talking about close-ups and fade-throughs of the vocalist’s face, a complete overdose of colour-saturation effects, and plenty of slowed-down footage of fans and/or live footage. Machine Head’s then-guitarist, Logan Mader, couldn’t have been trying to ape Dimebag Darrell’s look any more if he tried – compare his shirtless stagemoves in ‘Davidian’ to those of the late Darrell Abbott in the video to ‘I’m Broken’ (or nearly any of the live footage from Watch It Go). It’s almost a shame that ‘Old’ wasn’t the lead single from Burn My Eyes, as then I could’ve brought up the stylistic parallels between the monochrome “plot” sections of that video, versus those in the video for Pantera’s ’Cemetary Gates’. They’re both as laughably as unsubtle as each other, and in both cases the songs are many magnitudes superior to the quality of their accompanying videos.

Still, the video for ‘Davidian’ is interesting if only for the fact that Rob Flynn’s cornrow-gangbanger look is possibly the earliest signs of what would eventually become known as Robb Flynn’s Disease. Which brings us nicely to….

2) ‘Ten Tonne Hammer’ from The More Things Change.

As detailed over on Metal Inquisition, a case of Robb Flynn’s Disease is when a band is perceived to alter their image and/or music in order to realign themselves with popularist changes to the metal mainstream. It doesn’t really matter whether a band is actually actively doing this or not – merely that they are perceived to be doing it. At this stage of their careers, Machine Head were still very much mining the “gangbanger” look – the cornrows of ‘Davidian’ may be gone, but in their place is a silly bandana, wallet chains down to the floor, and an excess amount of football jerseys.

Just like their music at the time, while Machine Head still had one foot in the macho-posturing of the post-Pantera groove metal movement, they were very much mindful of where the future nu-metal direction the metal mainstream was heading. And while that Pantera video influence was waning in the face of more re-millennial video cliches – the migrainous colour saturation, the over-indulgence in cheap distortion effects, etc, it was still very much there with the slo-mo shots and fade-through transitions. At least with ‘Locust’, Machine Head seemed to have stopped chasing trends and settled down with their more “traditional” metal look and sound.

3) ‘Crashing Around You’ from Supercharger.

Skipping ahead to Machine Head’s fourth album, we can definitely say that ‘Locust’ at least represents an improvement in Machine Head’s use of backdrops in their videos. Released just days before 9/11, the video for ‘Crashing Around You’ became somewhat-infamous after Roadrunner Records pulled it from circulation due to fears of a possible backlash against a song featuring the lyric “your world comes crashing around you” accompanied by a video of skyscrapers on fire. Except, of course, the video doesn’t really show that at all. It has Machine Head playing arguably one of their worst-ever singles (which hasn’t been played live since the tour in support of Supercharger came to a close), in front of a studio backdrop that the band clearly never intended to taken as “real”. The “skyscrapers on fire” effect is just an overlay of some bluntly artificial flame graphics over the top of the San Francisco skyline as the song reaches it’s climax. Offensive? Not really? Cheap as hell? Oh yes.

4) ‘Imperium’ from Through The Ashes of Empires.

The period when Machine Head released Through The Ashes of Empires was a strange time for the band. Having been dropped by the American arm of Roadrunner Records, the band found themselves putting the album out on Roadrunner internationally, only for the success of the album to prompt Roadrunner USA re-signing them to release it in their home territory. It’s actually to Machine Head’s credit that they were able to rustle up any kind of video for ‘Imperium’.

The most damning criticism you can level at the first half of the video is that it is blandly functional – the repetitions of performance shots, and a mostly monochrome visual palette matches the no-nonsense return-to-roots sound of ‘Imperium’. It’s not until the second half of the video that things get wretched – the garish blue filters on the scenes next to the dead tree make it look like a low-budget re-imagining of Slipknot’s ‘Left Behind’ video, while the red lighting sections are blandly tacked-on to add some tonal variety when the much-overused technique of cutting between close-ups of Flynn in the videos various locales kicks in. That these are trivial issues to find fault with is endemic of what makes ‘Imperium’ such a lacklustre video – it isn’t so much that it has little to mock, but that it gives us even less to celebrate.

5) ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ from The Blackening.

I sincerely hope the video to ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ was commissioned and shot before the runaway success of The Blackening had made itself felt – and therefore during the period of uncertainty that Roadrunner USA was still feeling after re-signing the band. It would explain why the label was reluctant to commit to larger budgets for promoting Machine Head. Because the only alternative explanation I can think of for the ludicrous cheapness of this promo is that this was Robb Flynn acting out on some dark and previously-hidden desires to pay homage to the look and feel of naff Biohazard videos circa 1992.

6) ‘From This Day’ from The Burning Red.

Oh my, oh my – where to begin with ‘From This Day’? I skipped over this one in the chronological run-through so I could end on it, because it is truly a video shoot that everyone involved in Machine Head would dearly like to pretend never happened. Not only does it represent arguably the creative low point in Machine Head’s songwriting (if any song is responsible for Machine Head’s reputation for trying to ride the nu-metal bandwagon, it’s this one), but it’s also one of the most eye-watering examples of video direction I can think of. From the very first second it is visually atrocious, with CGI effects that are so bad – those video screens, those fake camera lens flares – that it makes the cut’n'paste insect swarm effects in ‘Locust’ look akin to battle scenes in Lord of The Rings.

I made allusions to Robb Flynn’s disease earlier, but ‘From This Day’ really cements that particular theory in place. Just look at those pointless and fucking ridiculous outfits. Metallic red tracksuit? Check. Black silk tangzhuang? Check. Metallic bodysuit for weird, out-of-nowhere suspension segment? Check. Leopardskin hair-dye? CHECK CHECK CHECK.

Then there’s the weird feeling that perhaps this video actually encapsules so much about modern metal that I find irksome. Five Finger Death Punch uses that tangzhuang look. Those extras are all wearing masks vaguely similar to those of Hollywood Undead. And it’s got people mucking about in a big stone tunnel, like Linkin Park did that one time. The video to ‘From This Day’ agitates me so because it subconsciously reminds me of the worst things in “metal” (and I use the term loosely). Then, now, forever and always.

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Are Machine Head’s videos really as bad as Hugh makes out they are, or could he have picked any other band and made almost the same points? How irritated should he be that by imposing the “lead singles” criteria, he was unable to take the piss out of the bad acting and literal imagery of the video to ’Halo’? Are there any other bands who’s videography deserves a “critical re-evaluation”? Let us know in the comments below.