Solitaire Unraveling Analysis

Solitaire Unraveling - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U45NfWSX-Vk

Mushroomhead, a masked band from Ohio in the USA, started out in 1993 and are my favourite band. Their style of music is a mixture of industrial metal and old rock singing with part rap, and their visual style has been always that of ‘Horror’ and ‘Fear’, beginning with simple X-face masked to their latest masks of mutilated skulls and pig faces and army helmets.

0:00 -0:06
 

Instantly we are introduced to medium shot of a bizarre creation (It’s a wooden Rabbit, but I didn’t know that till I googled it) As the medium shot lowers we see a young boy. This immediately introduces the audience into a dystopian or wasteland setting with the ruined trees and the surround desert. The young boy in the dystopian setting is a common theme in films etc as it shows innocence in a world of chaos.

0:06 – 0:10

After a very quick cut, we are shown a few quick scenes, one from a very high angle, zooming into the drums and then a close up of one of the singers (J-mann) with everything apart from his face is blurry. I quite like these shots as their shortness and their ‘different’ styles of shots jumping around add to the atmosphere as ‘Deranged’ as the music begins.

0:13 – 0:16

 Adding further to the deranged and surreal atmosphere, the shots indicate that there are two copies of each of the members (possibly an alter ego, which links to the scenes later), I like the idea of somewhat subtle changes to the characters and make the audience think about the differences and why they are different.

0:17 – 0:22

In this shot we see the giant sculpture being pulled by the small boy, this shot could represent, and relate to third world society where it is a literal dystopia and they have child labour. I also believe this shot is quite effective, because it acts like an establishing shot, but not at the beginning of the clip.

0:30

In this shot it details numerous meanings, as it has the band members coming out of the statue, and each ‘Alter ego’ are linked together but are unchained by the small boy. This could represent the shackles of slave labour (which I said before about the child) being freed.  This shot also holds the connotations of the industrial metal genre; heavily edited and a surreal atmosphere with a dark twist.

0:33 – 0:45

These collection of shots are possibly my favourite of the video, as the vocals become more aggressive and become more of a ‘growl’, fighting breaks out between the ‘Alter Ego’s’ occurs which gets more fierce as the vocals get heavier. As well as snappy shots of each band member which last no longer than half a second each, but these shots really keep up with the style and tempo of the song.

0:48- 0:56

Here we are introduced to an darker and even more surreal area, with the other lead singer present, the bizarre imagery portrayed links in well with the rest of the clip aswell as the usual conventions of industrial metal (Dark Imagery, odd costumes relating to the dark imagery).

1:40 – 1:44

I think this part is excellent; here we have the ‘DJ’ of the band ‘Stitch’ staring into the camera which is at very high angle (directly above him), and it slowly zooms into them changes as it fixates on his face whilst still lower, I also like how when the guitar riff it changes to an alternate shot of the band  keeping in line with the music.

2:04 – 2:11

Here we see a high angle shot with the words ‘Condemned’ appareaning in the sand, this can be related to the representation of what I said earlier of slave labour etc. It also however links to the lyrics aswell. (On another note I also really like this part of the song because of the amazing growl J-mann does).

2:53- 4:09

Around this point it appears it is near the end of the song, it takes a different twist and turns into a faster paced with both singers , before you saw one of the normal people point a finger (at whom you do not see), and J-mann replies ‘I’ve suffered’, this could mean that they have also suffered and are just repeating the same process to the ‘normal’ people. As they dismantle the statue they eventually enter it, and it is pulled by an older man. It becomes apparent that these people pulling it are all the same person, and they are still controlled and a slave for their whole life and the cycle continues until they die (which is portrayed when the old man collapses).