Metal is often a much too serious affair. Just because you’re in front of a camera doesn’t mean you need to be scowling and carving pentagrams into the nearest virgin.
But there’s a fine line between being lighthearted and being downright fucking goofy, and Trick Or Treat is happy to pop up from behind their amps and piss all over it.
In all fairness to most of the band, they more or less retain a good portion of their dignity by simply keeping their heads down and focusing on their instruments. But their singer, untethered from a guitar or sense of shame, expends all his energy on making you cringe until your bones ache. Like when he hammers home the chorus of “Never say goodbye” by waving his fingers in a Nuh-Uh fashion and then literally waving goodbye.
They also decide to loop in some poor woman for a lip-synced duet and brief moments of being trapped inside a box.
But what is most notable is how excruciatingly boring the video is. By the end, the singer has clearly run out of steam and can no longer fake even an ounce of enthusiasm. Below you can watch the moment where the song hits its crescendo, what it’s all been building towards, and he just stands there like someone hoping nobody’s noticed the pee stain on his jeans.
As I’ve noted in the past, Americans and Europeans have wildly differing tastes on what is and isn’t cool. And I thought at first that Trick Or Treat watched all of this, conferred with each other and agreed that it accurately represented the kind of band they are. But by the end, when they are wildly cheering this interminable chore of a video, I decided that these guys are just fucking with us.
