The Anatomy of a Horrible Music Video

In this post, I'll be analyzing two music videos: Attack Attack's original song "Stick Stickly", and Confide's cover of "Such Great Heights", the popular song by The Postal Service. These are both bands of the post-thrash metal/crabcore genre, and they take themselves very seriously.

First video:

Attack Attack - Stick Stickly
(Link)

Looking past all of the unexplained emotional symbolism and mysterious barnyard imagery, let's analyze a few of the basic attributes of this video:

1. Power

Power is a very important thing for this band, as well as a key component of what makes this music video so legendary.

Notice how the singer's hand raises as his face reaches it's emotional peak. This is his way of increasing the power of this shot as well as letting the audience know that he's still capable of finger movement after all of his heroin abuse.

Among the extremely talented cast is this woman, who seems to be getting more and more powerful throughout the video. Notice how she moved her arms in toward her chest when she screamed after realizing what a huge mistake her multiple lip piercings were.

The final and most powerful of these images is none other than the Synchronized guitar slam:
These guys have obviously spent hours practicing their unified stage frolicking in between spooning sessions at their apartment. Their investment paid off.

2. The Keyboardist

I don't think this guy plays anything until the techno breakdown during the last 30 seconds of the song. He certainly contributes to the band by headbanging constantly though... observe:

3. The Singer (Screamer)

The main goal of any crabcore singer is to convey as much emotion as possible while saying absolutely nothing of any importance. One by-product of this goal is being extremely annoying, which this singer seems to embrace. Notice a few tools that help him to boost his annoying factor:

4. Crabcore

This band single-handedly invented an entirely new and original genre:
Crabcore.

The main characteristics of crabcore guitarists are:

-extreme squatting
-constant headbanging
-hair concealed face

This pedal is also used:

Second video:

Confide - Such Great Heights (Postal Service Cover)
(Link)

This video is brutal to the max. The brutality often increases in increments, like the type of mono-syllabic noise being emitted by the drummer's talented vocal cords:


In order to double the brutality of this indie-pop lovesong anthem, this band has a screamer who has the power to form his mouth into any shape of oval that he wants:


Finally, the band demonstrates the full potential of their mislead sexual urges by turning the inside of this industrial refrigerator into a hardcore earthquake zone: