Video: Municipal Waste - "You're Cut Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBVrIlV5HxE
. . .
As someone whose television diet is heavily comprised of cartoons, it amazes me how difficult bands find it to produce a decent animated music video. Animation provides artists with incredible options to break the mold of what can be presented to the human eye, yet so many respectable artists put their names and reputations behind animated videos that totally eat the thick veiny one. Sometimes it’s a confused plot (Judas Priest, “War”), a lack of understanding of the art form being used (Heaven & Hell, “Bible Black”), or a confluence of both (Slayer, “World Painted Blood”). Whatever the reasoning, animated videos tend to be hit or miss—but when they hit, they fucking rule.
With “You’re Cut Off,” Virginia thrashers Municipal Waste have released an arguably perfect animated music video. Produced by IMOV Studios, it’s a minute-twenty-nine of hilarious thrash brutality that nails the band’s aesthetic while grabbing the viewer by the balls. It dodges every bad trope of the animated video—there’s no repeated footage, no awkward attempt at a coherent plot, no nonsensical metaphors, no painfully-slow zooming in and out on boring images to fill time–it’s just a frantic blast of cartoon violence that leaves you laughing diabolically and hitting ‘Replay’ at least once.
How do I love “You’re Cut Off”? Let me count the ways. First, the bare-bones plot: a seedy dive turns into a bar brawl when the Waste start to play, and everyone who drinks the Municipal Waste-brand booze mutates into radioactive zombies who battle a SWAT team. Secondly, the animation is surprisingly great: simple clean-line shapes in constant motion, reminiscent of underground cartoons like Mutilator and The Head. Then there’s the action: a symphony of uptempo violence in the vein of Superjail and Metalocalypse; it moves with the beat of the song, allowing sound and image to feed off each other. And they use every possible idea associated with Municipal Waste—evil booze, ’80s thrasher fashion, radioactive zombies, melting faces, vomit, bar brawls, parties gone wrong, toxic waste, trampolines. If you watch one video this year where a shark-man bites someone’s head off right before an old woman is decapitated by the door of her neon-green DeLorean, watch “You’re Cut Off”.
And then there’s the animated band themselves. Too often musicians don’t even appear in their own videos, which is preposterous—why make a cartoon music video if you don’t get to be a cartoon? Not only do IMOV’s caricatures of the band members do them justice—Tony Foresta’s round head is especially fantastic—but the level of realistic movement the characters are given is incredible and evocative. When Ryan Waste and Land Phil leap next to David Witte, it’s both ridiculous and wholly appropriate, and when they pop up behind the bar to yell the chorus at the bartender, the little bounce they do cracks this reporter up every time. Both times Tony Foresta screams the refrain into the camera, the animation is just awesome—even his hair moves! IMOV perfectly straddle a blurry line, making the cartoon band both ridiculous and entirely recognizable as the Waste themselves.
In a lot of ways it makes sense that Municipal Waste would be the band to make the coolest animated metal video since Tool’s “Sober”. Cartoons are all about calling attention to the freakshow of reality; characters like Popeye and Daffy Duck and Eric Cartman merely reflect the grotesque nonsense of everyday life back at us (especially Popeye; man, I totally relate to that belligerent, deformed sailor). With “You’re Cut Off”, Municipal Waste held a mirror to their scene, their fans, and themselves, and in doing so, created one of the most enjoyable music videos I’ve seen in years.
. . .
BUY THE FATAL FEAST
. . .
