Video: Revocation - "The Grip Tightens"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rXZs9FviFQ
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If you frequent metal blogs (and I assume you do) you’ve probably seen Revocation’s David Brodsky-directed music video for “The Grip Tightens”. People were re-posting it all over my Facebook wall, and with good reason: it’s pretty funny. But it’s a one-trick pony. Everything interesting or creative in the video stems from the advanced age makeup Revocation wears. Dressing young guns as old men is a gag as old as Looney Tunes. MTV’s “Jackass” used the same gag repeatedly. All Brodsky has done here is reconfigured a classic joke to include quirks unique to metal and hard rock. Hell, most of the gags aren’t even specific to Revocation’s style of music—when’s the last time you saw lace panties thrown at a technical death/thrash band?
What do you call taking something esoteric (death metal) and linking it to something relatable (laughing at old folks)? Good marketing. Revocation can’t simply market themselves to the same people they have been, they need to actively open their music up to people who might not otherwise give it a listen. This video does that, and would not have been possible without Scion’s footing the bill for a good makeup team. Without enough aging effects, the video would fall flat. As it stands, the product is a bit ridiculous, yes, but that’s the point.
Revocation’s video could have been played straight, and the results would have been much darker. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a nursing home, but they can be dismal, soul-crushing places for both staff and residents. I prefer this take—I have no desire to see a Metalsucks blogger change Dave Davidson’s colostomy bag. The first metalheads are reaching retirement age. Some will rock past it; crazy elderly gentlemen concerts aren’t so unbelievable. I just saw Accept, for example, and Wolf Hoffmann rocks harder, for two-and-a-half hours, at 52 than most people my age. His music still carries the youthful energy that made songs like “Fast as a Shark” what they are.
As for Revocation, they are making the best music of their careers right now (Teratogenesis and last year’s Chaos of Forms are both worth listening to), but I wonder if they will continue to play well past middle age. Their music is both young and old: it has elements of modern metalcore as well as an awful lot of classic thrash and death metal. When I see commentators complain that the metalcore generation doesn’t respect their forebears, I wonder if those people would be more comfortable with a fleet of Revocation t-shirts in Hot Topic. I doubt those folks would go to see Revocation, but I am sure Davidson would pay to see Atheist or Forbidden. Actually, I bet he’d rather open for them, and if he keeps making songs like “The Grip Tightens”, he just might.
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