I feel like I’ve been ragging on Alice in Chains a little bit lately, and I feel bad about that because I’m a huge Alice in Chains fan and I love Black Gives Way to Blue.

That being said, the band’s latest video, for the beautiful “Your Decision,” is slightly worse than the video for “Check My Brain.” Which is weird, because the director, Stephen Schuster, also directed the band’s totally awesome video for “A Looking In View.”

My beef isn’t with the presence of some chick named Amanda Fields, who was apparently on Project Runway (I’ve never seen it). I mean, she’s either had too much work done or just naturally looks like a freakin’ alien, but that’s neither here nor there. No, my complaint is mostly that the video is just lame – it seems to be taking its cues from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, but in the worst possible way. What the themes of that film have to do with this song isn’t clear, and a lot of the symbolic imagery subsequently feels forced and trite.

Still an awesome song, though.

-AR

Not to be a dick or anything, but if you ask me (and you didn’t but you’re reading this so fuck you), my good friend Sammy O’Hagar was too easy on Sepultura’s latest, A-Lex. The album is a mess, and there’s only one really decent song it – “We’ve Lost You.”

So: the good news is, Sep had the good sense to use “Lost” as the single for their new video. The bad news is, the video’s a mess. A-Lex, as you’re probably aware, is inspired by Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of that novel. But this video just tosses in as many recognizable bits from Kubrick movies as possible: the Korova Milk Bar* from Clockwork is there, sure, but so are the creepy twins from The Shining, and the Venetian mask orgy crowd from Eyes Wide Shut, and the cowboys from… actually, Kubrick never made a movie with cowboys, so I dunno what the fuck that’s about. I guess they couldn’t afford the ape outfits from 2001 or something.

ANYWAY, the video seems to demonstrate and complete lack of understanding of Orange: putting the kid in a Beethoven shirt is all well and dandy, but having him beat the shit out of a rapist – e.g., Alex turning out to be someone who is violent with good reason – is bullshit.

After the jump, I’ve included Slipknot’s video for “Spit it Out.” It’s a cheap video for a not especially great rap-metal song, but as far as Kubrick-inspired metal videos go, at least the ‘Knot’s shows a sense of humor.

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Blabbermouth tipped us off to the below footage of Sepultura rehearsing a new song for their upcoming album, which is apparently a concept album based on Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (which was – duh – also the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic film). This new album should provoke a lot of interest (if not record sales), ’cause it’s the first Sep album ever to feature neither of the Cavalera brothers.

So will it be any good? The riff in the video is okay, even if it doesn’t exactly knock my socks off. But the band’s last album, Dante XXI, was good enough that I’m curious to hear what Andreas Kisser and the fellas come up with.

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So… what do y’all think? Let’s get some premature judgements up in here!

-AR