Research into Music Videos - Spiritual Void by Overkill

Overkill is a thrash metal band which is a subgenre of heavy metal, characterized by a fast and aggressive tempo. The song title ‘Spiritual Void’ denotes a need for a faith to fill a ‘void’ in a person heart to make their life complete. The lyrics of the song link to the title but are somewhat at odds with what the song is expected to be about.

The video begins looking up through a hole towards the sky and the camera is swaying which indicates mental instability, the face that the camera is pointing up at the sky from below suggests the band is underground (which is shown to be true later in the video), being underground has another meaning of being hidden which contrasts to the words spiritual void, which is meant to be about a person finding themselves.

The next scenes has flashing lights while the camera watches a spider crawl along the floor,  the flashing lights are confusing and in many cases the spider is feared by the viewers. The subgenre that this song is a part of is denoted well by these two things, the flashing lights make the song seems more fast paced than it is at the beginning because the flashing lights are confusing and the fear created by the spider can be seen as an aggressive act.

The first the viewers see of the band is a silhouette of the two guitarists so there is mystery around them, the viewers don’t see the band face on until they begin to sing. Up until this point the band is shown mostly in silhouette or far enough away that they cannot be seen properly.

One of the most prominent features before the singing starts is a view of the band from above at the top of a hole and moving down towards the band, this can be viewed as the audience coming down to their level or being allowed into the secret which physiologically involves the audience.

After the singing starts the band continues being viewed from different directions and the flashing lights are a noticeable part of the video. The main singer puts his hands up in the air like he’s appealing to a higher power but he only does this when the camera is above him so in actual fact it looks like he is talking to the audience.

The music video continues with its fast pace and flashes between the singer singing and the rest of the band at various angles and viewpoints, continuing with some camera tilting to keep the mental instability theme and the flashing lights to create confusion and to tie in with the instability of the whole video. Where the singer sings: “Hahaha higher, are we all higher?” the lights are on at the moment of the second “higher” and he has his arms up close to his head, considering the context of the lyrics coupled with the image, this could be taken to mean he is talking about ‘higher’ as a place higher than the human plane of existence, Heaven, the bright light alludes to that of God or an angel, however as he is wearing black in the video this could also mean he is a fallen angel, or Devil which contrasts with the lyrics and the bright white light of the music video.

The band is all wearing classic dark colours and leather in the video, this follows the genre of metal as dark colours are a normal for metal bands, most metal bands also have a way of moving while playing their various instruments known as ‘Head banging’.  Overkill all have longer hair than normal men would have which allows them to head bang which covers their face and eyes which makes them look into the song, and when done in time to the music can be hypnotising to the audience. Many metal bands follow the stereotype of long hair, dark clothes and truthful, sometimes aggressive, lyrics so they look rebellious compared to the other genres of music.  

To conclude I will mention that most of the music video is cuts between the band and the singer, there isn’t a narrative in the music, however looking at other bands such as AC/DC and Iron Maiden it is clear that most metal bands and subgenres of metal prefer live versions or music videos of them playing, it seems that this is something that holds true for most metal bands, perhaps because of the type of music it is makes it difficult to make music videos or an effort to set their genre apart from others such as Pop and R’n’B. These genres have a tendency to use music videos to add more depth to their songs and create an image for themselves using aspects of themselves that appear in all their music videos (for example Lady Gaga is very well known for her theatrical dress style in all her music videos, despite her songs being quite normal lyrics-wise). I will have to decide whether to follow these metal genre stereotypes or not in my music video, while ‘Spiritual Void’ is a very good metal band in terms of following the stereotypes, but not all metal bands do this, there are a few that only take some aspects of the metal genre when they do music videos.