Metallica Initiates A Zombie War

Lucas Jensen | December 10, 2008 12:30 pm
Metallica’s video for “All Nightmare Long” is equal parts Lost, Cloverfield, Pet Sematary, and World War Z which hits me right in all of my geek parts. So why am I left so cold? Maybe it’s because the video does so many things. First, it’s a scratchy 1930s Soviet film reel, complete with Futura subtitles. It’s about some spores from space that reanimate and zombify things using the power of bad CGI. Next we are treated to a lot of dark-and-not-super-great animation about the Soviets turning the US into a zombie nation or something. And then headless zombies attack some scientists in the 1980s. Oh, and then in the present day Barium is discovered in Arkansas. Or something.

It’s kinda hard to find the plot in this one and that could be because the song and video seem to be working at cross purposes. I always found the song to be a distraction when I was trying to watch the video, and when I was trying to listen to the song, the video annoyed me. There is not one shred of synchronicity between the song and the video; each would stand better on its own. I’m not condemning Metallica and director Roboshobo for getting ambitious and moving away from performance videos, but this one just doesn’t work for me; it’s a nine-minute chore.

Metallica – “All Nightmare Long” [YouTube]

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