You know the deal: this Gruesome song is gonna sound like one (or all) of the first three Death albums. You back it. We back it. But what about a proper Gruesome video? I mean, Death’s first video wasn’t shot until their FOURTH album Human. SHOULD THIS EVEN BE A THING?!
Undeterred by such logistical hurdles, Gruesome partnered with Florida-based studio Iron Sight Cinema to create the following video for the title tune to the band’s upcoming six-track EP. Frontman Matt Harvey gives Decibel some bonus cuts.
How much input, if any, did you have in the story line of the video?
Matt Harvey: I gave [Maruta vocalist] Mitch Luna a synopsis that was—if you can believe it—even more ’80s cheese-oriented, but it was a bit too elaborate for our budget and schedule. With the amount of concept footage in the video, I can see now that it would have been too much even if we could have pulled it off. The song would have had to have been twice as long [Laughs]! They kept some key elements, like the tarot card woman and zombie-chasing-woman and ditched some of the other stuff, the “it was all a dream—or was it?” ending, [guitarist] Dan [Gonzalez]’s eyes glowing red and bewitching the woman during the guitar solo, etc. Like I said, my ideas were the epitome of cheesiness.
Didn’t the band just shoot this a couple weekends ago? Was the group performance shot at the same time as the action sequence?
Harvey: The conceptual footage was shot about a week before and we came in and filmed afterwards. Then through good old fashioned “movie magic” the whole thing was put together really, really quickly which was amazing. Mitch and the Iron Sight guys just did an incredible job.
You shot the video in Florida. Did that only add to Chuck Schuldiner vibes of letting the metal flow?
Harvey: Well, three quarters of the band live in Florida, so we’re basically a Florida-based band, except for little ol’ me, so pretty much most things we do happen in Florida [Laughs]! But for what we’re doing, there’s really no place else we should be doing this.
I’m hoping the figure on the cover of the Dimensions of Horror EP—and the main monster character in the video—is the like a Jason X fully-loaded time-traveling version of the figure on the cover of Death’s Leprosy. Am I on to something?
Harvey: I like where you’re going with this. After almost dying of leprosy, he was taken to an evangelical Christian cult that tried to heal him, ahem, spiritually, but he finally died, before being brought back to life in a zombie ritual. We found him looking for work on the streets of Orlando, trying to get teenagers to pay him to buy them beer. We are honored to play a part in re-vitalizing the career of such a beloved figure in the metal world.
OK, need your favorite Death album AND your favorite horror film to properly close this out.
Harvey: Scream Bloody Gore and Re-Animator.
Gruesome’s Dimensions of Horror EP is available from Relapse May 20. If you already own every Death LP, get this.
