When did I get sick of music videos? Probably about a twenty years ago, if I really think about it. The tail-end of the last millennium may have heralded simultaneously the arrival of Eminem and Nu-Metal in the wake of grunge and a decade of Britpop and chart-orientated dance music, but what seemed like a revolution was, in truth, just marketing. Punk-pop and middling rock that pretended to be alternative was ultimately packaged rebellion, no more than commercial cack dressed with tattoos and hair dye being pedalled to ‘the kids’ who wanted to be ‘different’ but were, as fact, as conservative as the last generation of pop pickers.
And so it was that mass-marketed ‘alternative’ ‘culture’ cast a mold of depressing homogenisation, where very other ‘alternative’ band looked and sounded like Lost Prophets or whoever was the flavour of the week. And ever ptomo video took the same format: band miming the song or snippets of live footage intercut with some half-baked non-narrative that hints at being moody and meaningful but really isn’t either.
And so it goes. Altered Sky look and sound like countless bands from the last 18 years, the twist being they have a female drummer as well as vocalist. So they’re kinda like Paramore only with two Hayley Williams.
And because of the Internet, bands don’t release real singles so often these days, going for ‘video singles’ instead. The video for ‘Stupid in the Dark’ is slick and formulaic, and the song itself… yawn.
