UK-based experimental progressive metal troupe recently unveiled their latest music video for “Reform Part III.” The song comes off the band’s II full-length, released in North America via Candlelight Records this past May. The video was shot in two locations — Terminal Studios in London near Tower Bridge and a stone masons warehouse in Hampshire — and was directed by David Kenny of Shash Medi [http://shashmedia.com].
Commented drummer Mike Pitman of the video: “This song was chosen because musically, we knew it would have first impression maximum impact for those who might not be familiar with us. We also knew we could pull off some balls-out visuals to compliment such a song.
Weirdly enough some of the ideas for the storyline actually came from an old Radiohead video for ‘Just.’ It had that notorious ‘subtitled man laid out on a pavement’ interpretive concept that was such a novel idea. We wanted to borrow ideas from that and add a lot more fatalities and blood. The actual plot of our video was created by [vocalist] Rich [Thomason] and director David Kenny putting our heads together and looking for something that would have a climactic feel with a killer ending loosely based around a kind of mercenary, hired goons kind of character set. The dark visuals, abstracts and general mood of the video is more a trademark of Kenny and two of his awesome colleagues — Mike Grimes (cameras) and Sammm Agnew (makeup and gore) — and yes, that’s Sammm with three ‘m’s!
We shot the video in two locations. The band shots where we have instruments in hand were shot at the Terminal Studios in London near Tower Bridge. We basically took one of their large studios and blackened it out almost entirely as we really wanted a super minimal slick feel to the band shots and the guys at Terminal were instrumental in this happening as planned. The second location was a stone masons warehouse down in Hampshire. It had plenty of surrounding areas and interior toys we could exploit for the story part of the video. It also had what appeared to be a thirty-foot deep pit that we really wanted to throw the victim of our story (Jenny Waterhouse) in to. But no such luck thanks to health and safety and all that bollocks.”
XERATH was originally formed in 2007 as an experiment to combine film score composition with extreme groove-based heavy metal. Now a fully functional band with an emphasis on the live stage, XERATH aim to remain on the cutting edge of extreme. Metal Hammer hailed the band for sounding like, “the result of a chaotic experiment to produce the ultimate please-them-all 21st century metal band,” while Blistering added to the sentiment noting, “once you have your head wrapped around the gravitational strength of XERATH‘s chug-enforced labyrinthine rhythms and beats, you can sit back and wonder at the sense they make and what compelling fantasy they create.” II features artwork from Colin Marks (Strapping Young Lad, Nevermore, Scar Symmetry).
“…a crushing 58 minute voyage” — Metal Underground
“…epic…” — Popdose
“…a mind-blowing composition that presents the truly unique and high-class musicianship of XERATH.” — Metal Assault
“…an album you’re going to want to check out, if even just for the originality factor.” — The Metal Register
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