This is a group of sick puppies named Anthrax.
Long known as one of the pioneers of thrash, soon to be the target of numerous complaints for their newest video, ‘Blood Eagle Wings’ from their latest album, “For All Kings”.
Seriously… consider yourself warned. This video is not for the faint of heart and features numerous scenes of torture and mutilation.
I am not quite sure where Anthrax was ‘going’ with this video… I found this to be over-the-top and difficult to stomach, all the while asking myself, ‘ahhh…. why?’.
The song is competent enough for new Anthrax… I think… it’s hard to remember because my retinas are still screaming at my brain for forcing them to sit through this eight minute snuff film all Clockwork Orange style.
Perhaps at this point you think I am exaggerating… maybe taking some journalist license with my words for sensational effect.
You would be mistaken.
This is the most horrific video to be presented from a ‘mainstream’ artist in the history of videos and I am curious to see the fallout response.
Even though it may be guilty of toggling between genuine masochistic misery porn and some stunted adolescent’s student horror film, the concepts being presented are beyond mere suggestions of horror, sprinting over the line of ‘gratuitous violence’ by the 1:30 mark in an 8:00 minute gore-fest.
However, all vomit reflexes aside… if you wade through to the very end… I choked myself dizzy with laughter.
Does the punchline redeem the video? Not really. but having a legitimate laugh after dragging one’s psyche through some dark, disturbing shit is the least they can do.