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Dave
has been asked to feature in the new music video for metal
sensation
(Click to view Sacred
Mother Tongues official website)
Our hero is soon to be
gracing us with his presence on our TV screens when he is
showing on every Music TV channel in the land when he
appears in the music video for the latest guaranteed hit
by metal sensation Sacred Mother Tongue who are brought to
us to tantalize our eardrums by
7 Management.
The group consists of 5
fiery metalists from middle England who came together in
2004 and soon gained a massive following and fan base
thanks to there “explosive live performances” and “tight,
aggressive, yet melodic metal sound”.
The band members are:
Visit their Myspace page
by clicking the link below!
The lads (Darrin South on
vocals, Craig Newell and Joe Garrett on guitars, bass
player Josh Gurner and drummer Lee Newell) have asked Dave
to play the 17th century blood thirsty villain “The Barber
Of Fleet Street” other wise known as Sweeney Todd in their
latest fast pace and hard hitting music video.
The track Force Fed
already has rave reviews being featured on the BBC Rock
show and the Total Rock fans favourite play list. Its fans
include the legendary producer Russ Russell who has
offered to do a remix of the track for a special release.
I have been speaking to
the bands manager Rob Ferguson from 7 Management and asked
him what the video is all about and he said:
"The
track rockets into action, we open on a close up of a
blood-spattered hand gripping a chunk of raw meat.
Energetic jump cuts show the morsel hacked, flipped and
tenderised with venom. Dropped onto a tray it is thrown
into an oven, its flames roar like the fires of hell.
Slamming the door shut the meat races through various
stages of cooking, it sweats blood, oozes juices and
finally crisps up, at which point it is taken from the
oven, garnished and carried off by a waiter into a
restaurant adorned with ponsy black tie diners. From
behind the kitchen door the chef (Dave Courtney) sneers,
his eyes follow the plate with glee. Something isn’t
right. The frenetic pace of the editing means we are still
within the first 30 seconds of the track."
"On the opening line we cut to the lead
singer, revealing the ill matched entertainment for the
evening, Sacred Mother Tongue, centre stage of the
restaurant, which is occupied by pompous self flagellating
gluttons. Shrouded in pools of light and shade their
raucous energy blows the place apart. However, the diners
seem oblivious."
"The waiter, carrying the meat dish,
passes in front of stage and we follow. Reaching a table
he carefully places the food in front of a snobby diner.
Without thanks the diner tucks in. On first taste it is
clear the meat reaches parts other meats cannot."
"What follows is an escalation of excess
as we cut between the bands performance and the diners
increasing obsession with the meat. The bands performance
grows darker in conjunction with the diner’s descent into
increasingly carnivorous actions. What is it about the
meat that causes such frenzy? Aware of not wanting to
commit any social faux pas the guests try unsuccessfully
to restrain themselves as they devour the meat with less
and less grace. As it progresses the occasional drop of
blood trickles from the corner of their mouths, which they
wipe with stained napkins. Seconds are ordered. The
kitchen is busier than ever, carving, slicing and
hacking."
"Sacred Mother Tongues visceral
performance has reached debauched levels, as too has the
guests obsession for the meat. At about 3min 17sec the
track slows. A diner wipes blood and juice from his mouth
with as much dignity as he can muster. Excusing himself
from the table he passes through the restaurant to the
toilet. Standing at the urinal he stares vacantly forward.
Suddenly an unseen assailant ambushes him, forcing a
chloroform-laced cloth laced over his mouth. After an
unsuccessful struggle he finally he loses consciousness. A
series of jump cuts, his body dragged through a corridor
by the feet into the kitchen and onto a silver surface.
His body is marked with blue dotted lines as if prepared
for plastic surgery. Finally his assailant is revealed,
it is the chef (Dave Courtney). He wields a cleaver over
the dead man sizing up the blue marked ‘cuts’. He swings,
a flow of blood sprays up the wall. "
"Cutting to an identical shot to the
opening we realise the meat being carried in chefs bloody
hands is that of the unfortunate diner. The singer commits
his final roar as Marco cracks a sinister grin and watches
through the kitchen window as the rich gorge on their own
flesh, oblivious to being force-fed their own rumps.."
"The video is infused with dark energy
juxtaposed with elements of tongue in cheek humour. Slick
black and white tuxedos contrast the rich blood reds
giving the video a slightly vampiric feel but with the
class and style of American Psycho. The use of handheld
camerawork and close ups of all the blood filled meat
eating will add to the uneasiness of the whole video.
Thick with atmosphere and sinister undertones we are
offered a glimpse of what it might be like to attend a
dinner party in hell."
Click
the single's cover below to hear "Force Fed" by Sacred
Mother Tongue and more of their Devilish tracks with
compliments of www.myspace.com
For those of you who
don't know who Sweeney Todd is he was born in 1748 in the
slums of Stepney, London and was the only child to 2
alcoholic silk mill workers.
By the
age age of 5 he was working from 6am till 8pm, 6 days a
week in the same mill as his parents to earn extra money
for their gin.
When he was 12 London saw
the coldest winter ever and many slum dwellers died as
they couldn't afford heating or warm clothes. Sweeney's
parents were no acceptation because they both died
together after passing out in a gin joint and froze to
death.
Sweeney was made a parish
orphan and because there was no room in the work house he
was sent to work as an apprentice for cutler John Crook's
in High Holborn where he trained to make, repair and
sharpen razor's and knifes.
He was beaten daily,
starved and slept on the floor at night and he wanted to
escape but because he worked for room and board he had no
money to pay for his life outside the shop so he decided
to steal from there to make some cash to leave but he was
caught and charged.
Because of his young age he
escaped the gallows and was sent to Newgate prison for 5
years, where he befriended the prison barber, also a
convict, who agreed to train him in his trade.
When he was released from
prison at 19 he decided to set up a business as a
travelling barber, plying his trade on London street
corners. He also shacked up with a prostitute called Molly
Elmin who he made promise to give up her street walking if
he agreed to keep her. However, one day when working at
Hyde Park a man asked Sweeney for his services and whilst
he was going about his work the man mentioned the fact
that he had enjoyed the services of Molly as a street
walker the night before. Raged with jealousy Sweeney
slashed the mans throat from ear to ear before doing a
runner and managed to avoid capture.
This murder gave him a
taste for blood and in 1787 he leased a shop on the north
side of Fleet Street between St Dunstans church and the
Royal Courts of Justice. When setting up the shop he
noticed that the abandoned crypts underneath St Dunstans
run right underneath his shop and this gave him a great
idea.
(picture of Sweeney Todd's
Shop)
He built himself a trap-door
with a barbers chair fixed on each side so that when a
person was sitting in the chair he could quickly slit
their throat and then pull a leaver flipping the trap door
all the way round, dropping the corpse to the floor in the
crypt beneath and flipping the new barbers chair that was
fixed on the reverse in place for the next victim. At the
end of the day he would go down to the crypt and collect
all their valuables up for selling before going home.
(Picture of the cover of a
"penny dreadful" as they where known then aka a True Crime
Mag)
Soon after starting this he
became friendly with the widow women Margery Lovett who
had been left the pie shop next door by her dead husband.
They became lovers and moved in together.
After a
while Sweeney was faced with a problem, he had so many
bodies down in the crypt that he couldn't get anymore in
and so as a solution to this problem he let Margery in on
his little hobby and asked her if she could cook the
remains and put them in pies to sell in her shop. Margery
readily agreed, happy to take the free meat that would
make her money and so they set to work on her pie shop
making a false wall in between her part of the crypt which
also ran underneath her premises and his so that he could
kill the victims, throw them through the trap-door then go
down into the crypt, strip the body of all valuables and
clothes, skin them, gut them and remove all the meat from
the bones. Finally he would place all the useful meat and
organs in boxes, push aside the fake wall and deposit them
in Margery's half of the crypt putting the wall back
afterwards. Margery would then cook the meat and put it in
the pies for selling.
(Picture of the Fleet
Street Crypt)
Margery's "veal" and "pork"
pies became very popular and in fact people both rich and
poor would flock to her to buy some, queuing round the
block to wait for 12pm every day when they would go up for
sale.
This went on for quite
sometime until a foul smell began to fill St Dunstans
Church. It was ignored for a while until it became so bad
that the parishioners thought the church was disease
ridden and so the authorities where called.
A Mr Otton from The Bow
Street Runners (predecessors of the police force) came to
investigate with some of his men and a massive search for
the smell was launched. As the men went down into the
crypt which was a complete through tunnel underneath the
church and all adjoining businesses (apart from Sweeney
and Margery's false wall) the smell became worse and it
soon became apparent why. When they got underneath
Sweeney's shop they found the blood, bones, skin and other
human remains of over 160 people as well as the couples
false wall.
They decided to search the
living quarters of Sweeney and Margery's living
accommodation in secret before they made any arrests and
when they did they found a treasure trove of items
belonging to dozens of people who where currently reported
missing.
They arrested Sweeney and
Margery straight away and they both came quietly. Sweeney
made no comments at all but Margery confessed to the lot
but she escaped the gallows by poisoning herself in
December 1801it Newgate Prison.
Sweeney Todd was put on
trial for just one of his victims, sailor Francis
Thornhill because the rest of his victims couldn't be
identified. He was found guilty and hung in Newgate prison
yard on January 25 1805. |
