Anyone that knows me knows that I’m an enormous fan of the band Monster Magnet. Maybe this has to do with a friend of mine playing Dopes to Infinity on repeat the first time I ever took LSD. Maybe it’s because Dave Wyndorf is a supernatural space wizard from outside of time. Whatever the reason, to this day I still probably watch the Negasonic Teenage Warhead video at least twice a year and have always been of the opinion that it’s up there with the best ever made. Unfortunately, they’ve never really had the budget to match that insanity until about a month ago when they dropped a new video for The Duke, from their brilliant 2013 “comeback” album Last Patrol. Just genius level shit going down there, and after finding myself watching it like 10 times over the period of a few weeks I was like, wait, who is the guy who directed this and more importantly, has he done anything else that’s equally as mind bending? Quite quickly via the wonders of the internet I realized not only that he has, but that The Duke isn’t even necessarily my favorite.
Sometimes you find something you dig and end up nerding out compulsively for a spell. I’ve now watched these videos each like a hundred times and deemed myself well versed enough to compile a handy top 5 list of his work for y’all. Since Halloween’s right around the corner, now seemed like about as good a time to post this as any. I’m not even a big fan of horror, but Phil Mucci’s work is so steeped in trippy mysticism that it transcends the genre quite spectacularly. Seriously, if you’ve got a free 25 minutes or so, I couldn’t recommend anything considered spooky more highly. And away we go.
5. Huntress – Zenith
Okay, so there’s not much of a narrative to this one like a lot of his others and the concept basically amounts to: singer from Huntress is a witch queen cavorting with a coven of slut-tastic nuns and summoning evil UFOs from her ancient sky temple up on high. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure you need much more of a concept than that.
4. Pig Destroyer – The Diplomat
Watch as a douchebag alien diplomat descends upon a gaggle of green blooded space monkeys and hands out high grade weaponry. Brutality ensues. I’m not the biggest fan of grindcore, but I must confess that I’m not sure if a video could capture the essence of a song much more effectively than this does. Period.
3. Monster Magnet – The Duke
In the wake of Hiroshima the psionic daughter of Satan is kidnapped by military spooks and hidden in an underground base where she helps them develop a high tech missile defense system while simultaneously seducing everyone in sight. Of course she eventually gets loose and summons unholy UFOs to destroy the world. Of course she does.
2. High on Fire – Fertile Green
Did you know Jesus Christ had a twin brother named Balteazeen? Yeah, neither did I, but in this video he’s a stoner biker dude who goes on a mystic quest to fuck an ancient goddess made out of weed. This unleashes a poisonous mist designed to transform a hellish planet earth that’s been taken over by the war machine. The cross shaped sky scrapers are a nice touch. Subtle.
1. Opeth – The Devil’s Orchard
The genius of this can’t be understated. It’s like a retro Italian sexploitation horror flick about a young woman committing suicide and descending into the underworld. From there she supernaturally summons her lover to join her in the depths of hell, and let’s face it, if hell looked that cool why on earth wouldn’t you want to follow her downward spiral swan dive? I think I watched this like 5 times in a row after I first saw it. Stunning. Just stunning.
I guess this would be my long form way of saying, good God Hollywood, get this dude a film deal already, and while you’re at it, hire me on as an Occult writing consultant. It’d be interesting to see if he could break free from traditional genre confines and make something transcendent like say old school David Cronenberg did with Videodrome and Naked Lunch, or Lynch did with Twin Peaks. I’d buy my ticket months before it even dropped. Check out Phil Mucci’s website here and Happy Halloween everyone!
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