AMP – Archives For The Ages: Volumes One & Two
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Videos: B-
AMP Magazine is one of the best music publications on the
market simply by going for music acts that no one is hearing about anywhere
else. As an extension of that important
part of the press, they have teamed up with Music Video Distributors to bring
together Music Video collections of the many up and coming acts gracing their
pages. AMP – Archives For The Ages
has produced two single DVD sets with some impressive talent that deserve to
have a shot at more exposure and these discs do the jobs nicely. The acts ands their music are as follows:
Volume One:
1)
Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists –
Against Me!
2)
Peace – Agnostic Front
3)
Orange Alert – The Briefs
4)
False Alarm – The Bronx
5)
Perfect Weapon – Communiqué
6)
Eagles Become Vultures –
Converge
7)
Every Time I Die – Ebolarama
8)
Here I Am – The Explosion
9)
The Weapon They Fear –
Heaven Shall Burn
10)
The New
Summer Ended In June – Misery Signal
11)
Supermodel Robots – The
Network
12)
I Should’ve
Sent You Flowers – Nora
13)
We Had A
Deal – Onelinedrawing
14)
White Gold – Roses
Are Red
15)
What Drives
The Weak – Shadows Fall
16)
Like Days – The
Start
17)
Black
Hearts Now Resign – Unearth
18)
Famous
Friends & Fashion Drunks – A Wilhelm Scream
Volume Two:
1)
The Deepest Gray – All That Remains
2)
West Wye – Avail
3)
Contagion – The Black Dahlia Murder
4)
They Will Kill Us All Without Mercy – The
Bronx
5)
Tomorrow Belongs To Us – The
Casualties
6)
Nothing Left – Cataract
7)
Cover – Engine Down
8)
Revolution Calling – The
Fight
9)
Anti Hero – God Forbid
10)
Midlife
Riot – Henry Fiat’s Open Sore
11)
Miss Take –
Horrorpops
12)
X-Rayted – The
Lot Six
13)
The Great
Red Shift – Most Precious Blood
14)
Repeat
Process – 100 Demons
15)
Spring
Divorce – Planes Mistaken For Stars
16)
Incisions –
Remembering Never
17)
White
Lights – Rufio
18)
Infrared –
Strike Anywhere
19)
Analog –
Strung Out
20)
Tonight – The
Soviettes
21)
False Hope – The
Unseen
As the spine reads, the genres are Pink, Indie, Hardcore
and Metal, though some other forms surface.
I was hoping The Briefs would be more retro, though I loved the old
color animated clip about emergency authoritative messages. They have some Ska and Punk going worthy of
the most hardcore bands around. I also
got a kick out of the way The Bronx put themselves into a montage of
Horror/Sci-Fi B-movies that would have been right at home on Mystery Science
Theater. Mike Piscitelli directed
and helped to create this one.
Communiqué’s Perfect Weapon reminded me of
Blondie’s Atomic, but enough of its own song to still be
interesting. Heaven Shall Burn’s clip
has some serious energy to it and some good editing, with flash freeze frames.
Marc Drywa directed that one. Heath
& Dave Lowbrow helmed a few clips here, but the one for A Wilhelm Scream
that rounds out the disc is a good closer and their best work. The zoom & freeze works for the live
stage performance.
Going to the second disc, with a new Brian De Palma film
of the same name due, the band The Black Dahlia Murder might get some
unexpected publicity. This live
performance is not bad. Freezing on
frame that split in the middle because the editor is finding such in-between
frames. Director Jason Joseph comes up
with one of the more interesting approaches to shooting a band live and the
indoor location helps. Engine Down’s Cover
by Bradley Scott is also one of the better live performance clips with its open
gazebo and smoother-if-still-opaque lighting approach. Too bad the band broke up. The Henry Fiat’s Open Sore clip from
director Daniel Bjurgard Mans Adolfson is a hoot in its use of nothing but
paper cut outs. Justin Purser’ solution
for a live performance of Horrorpops’ Miss Take is to pretend the
audience is seeing them from a 3-D movie complete with the red/blue glasses!
I liked that. Ryan
Ricket’s X-Rayted for The Lot Six takes the band’s live performance and
good song, then mixes their images with paper cut outs, but mixes both color
and monochrome. This is some fancy
digital work, of course, but I liked it very much too. Christian Winter’s Infrared for
Strike Anywhere is one of the rare political clips aimed at the discomfort at
the WTO starting with a Mussolini quote about what Fascism is. It works very well and good for them!
The second disc ends with the best Punk number of them
all, the Ian McFarland/Mark Higgins’ False Hope clips for The
Unseen. Needless to say the second set
is stronger than the first, but the first is much bolder in its rawness, a
quality many may prefer. Most of these
are bands-playing-instruments performances, but more interesting on average
than anything you’ll see on an MTV-like outlet.
The various aspect ratios usually come down to 1.33 X 1 or
1.78 X 1 letterboxed widescreen without anamorphic enhancement, but a few
scope-like 2.35 X 1s are also here. The
footage ranges from some film, to usually lower-definition video, but there are
some visually creative entries. Io do
not know if I would count the ones that use feature film footage, though
industrial films and stock footage seem to work better where applicable. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is not bad in
many cases, though some of the recordings are strident and a few have some Pro
Logic surrounds. You might want to
experiment throughout. There are no
extras, but these are solid must-see sets worth your time.
- Nicholas Sheffo
