Voodoo Farming #4 (07/02/09): The Top Ten Zombie Music Videos

Welcome to a very special edition of Voodoo Farming: A Not-Quite In-Depth Look At Zombies In Popular Culture.

I typically write these posts at least a few days in advance. Sometimes, however, current events will change that schedule. This is one of those times.

I was going to save this article for #5, but I’ve decided to bump it up to number 4 on account of recent events. (Read the title and you should be able to figure it out.)

There were a few videos that would have made it onto here if it weren’t for the embedding disabled by request (read the linky for another opinion on YouTube’s greedy douchebaggery). But screw ’em, all the important ones could be found in some form that could be embedded, and most of ’em would have ended up in the middle of the list.

Although this is a Top Ten list, my hours of research (in cooperation with my roommate Rocketcock*) brought up way more than ten zombie music videos. After watching the candidates multiple times, I still had a few more than ten.

Some videos were disqualified from my list for one reason or another, or perhaps they were by relatively unknown bands and thus didn’t make the list. We’re going to start with these Honorable Mentions and then move down the list from 10 to 1. Let’s get going!

*Rocketcock is a trademarked nickname invented by me. Well, it isn’t actually trademarked, but god dammit it should be.

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Honorable Mention #1: RE: Your Brains Fan Video from Dragoncon

RE: Your Brains is arguably the song that catapulted Jonathan Coulton to Internets fame. For a video produced by a bunch of fans at a con, this is pretty damn entertaining. The song’s good, too.

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Honorable Mention #2: Out of the Abyss by Judgement Day

I read about this on a thread on the All Things Zombie forums and thought it was worth checking out. It was!

While many of these videos are from some of my favorite bands (and I knew about them in advance), I really relied on this thread (coupled with additional research) for a lot of my ideas.

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Honorable Mention #3: Wake The Dead by Comeback Kid

This is one of my favorite songs by this band, and this video is just a missed opportunity. You have a crowd of people rife with tasty gray matter, and the only zombie in sight isn’t a zombie at all – it’s some dude in a Frankenstein mask. The video’s good and the song’s good, but there’s just so much more they could have done with it.

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#10: The Day The Dead Walked by Six Feet Under

I’m admittedly a fan of Death Metal, and it slightly disturbs me that I can understand most of what the lead singer is saying.

This video is pretty good in its own right, but compared to the other nine on the list this one just ended up on the ass end because the rest are that much better. That’s right people, things improve from this point on.

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#9: Love? by Strapping Young Lad

This video is a tribute to a classic zombie movie. If you don’t know which one it is, then you’re going to have a very difficult time in future issues of VF.

For the ill-informed, the movie is Evil Dead. Go out and watch it now. Well, finish reading the rest of this post, and then go out and watch it.

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#8: What Doesn’t Die by ANTHRAX

There seems to be three recurring themes in zombie music videos:

1) Some or all of the band beats the shit out of zombies.

2) Some of all of the band are zombies themselves (or eventually end up that way).

3) The band gets overwhelmed by the zombies near the end, wrapping the video up in a delightful display of fatalism.

What Doesn’t Die is the first of many videos that goes 3 for 3 on this list!

Take note at the beginning of the video, where you’ll see a cameo by Brian Posehn. Many of you will know him as Kevin the Mailroom Guy from Just Shoot Me!. He has an awesome song called Metal By Numbers which features Scott Ian (ANTHRAX’s guitarist). His appearance here seems to be part of a mutual crossover on their part. The video features several metal legends. More importantly, I wish I could grow a beard half as awesome as Scott Ian’s.

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#7: Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz

I love Gorillaz. I grew up listening to them. I can listen to Demon Days all day, and I once listened to Feel Good Inc. for 19 hours straight. (It did irreversible damage on my psyche, but to be fair something damages my fragile mentality on a weekly basis.)

This video bears the honor of being the only 100% animated music video on this list. It’s also one of the very few songs that doesn’t fall into some category of metal. Metal bands seem to love zombie music.

One day, I will form a band and write an entire CD filled with zombie music. That is one of my life’s goals.

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#6: Scream by Misfits

This video was directed by George Romero. If you don’t know who that is, let me just list a few of the movies he’s been involved in:

Night of the Living Dead

Dawn of the Dead

Document of the Dead

Land of the Dead

Diary of the Dead

…of the Dead (working title)

He’s written all of those movies, as well as directed, edited, and acted in most of them. I’m sure we’ll see Dead of the Dead in the next ten years.

Having George Romero direct your zombie music video is like having Ron Jeremy direct your homemade porno. You just know it’s going to be good.

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#5: Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi

What’s better than zombies? Zombie cheerleaders!

I’ve become rather fond of Lordi ever since I heard this song in an anime music video a few years ago. They are one of the most interesting costumed rock acts out there and their music is awesome.

Amazingly, a few religious groups have protested Lordi for being occult, Satanic, etc. I can’t quite understand how they can take issue with a band who has songs like Hard Rock Hallelujah and Devil is a Loser. The ironing is delicious.

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#4: Blood Red Summer by Coheed & Cambria

The first time I saw this video, I was a bit putt off by the lead singer’s vocal style. This was in the era when high-pitched boy bands and R&B singers were assaulted MTV constantly, so I dismissed their musical stylings.

One purchase of Rock Band and several hundred playthroughs of Welcome Home later, I changed my mind.

Blood Red Summer is an excellent piece of music in my opinion, but the video is what made this video a serious contender for the number one spot. It captures the emotions that a zombie onslaught will inevitably bring: a stoic sense of survival, the uneasy potential for coming up against undead friends and relatives, the sense of loneliness… I think Claudio had a decent chance of fending off the zombies, but he was at the point where he just didn’t care anymore.

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#3: Gorbachev by Anj

skippy introduced me to this video via a post on his site many months ago. I have since showed it to every single one of my friends and posted it on a ton of forums I frequent.

It has a guy who could be a dead ringer for the Barbarian class from Diablo II running around and killing Commie zombies. That’s all I have to say about the video. That justifies it’s #3 spot, and if you don’t feel that it deserves this placing I implore you to watch it. You will heartily agree with me.

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#2: I’ll See You In My Dreams by Moonspell

I showed skippy this video and told him about the movie I’ll See You In My Dreams. ISYIMD is the first Portuguese Zombie movie, and I have had the good fortune of seeing it. The movie’s official site is officially squatted and the DVD is bound to become a collector’s item.

Aside from featuring scenes from the movie, this video has the distinct honor of being the only music video, movie, etc. that has ever shown a zombie smoking a joint and getting high out of his mind. Watch it. Love it. Dream about it.

Moonspell is currently touring the United States, and I will be taking the opportunity to go to their NYC show. If you like their music and they’re coming to your area, I wouldn’t miss them – they’re from Portugal and they rarely tour the states. If you’d like to say hello to me at the show, you’re more than welcome to do so. I’ll be the tall white guy with long hair and wearing a lot of black clothes.

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#1: Thriller by Michael Jackson

Well, now you know why this post was bumped up a bit in the rotation. Of course the #1 zombie music video is going to be Thriller!

Despite all the troubles he had in the last 20 years, Michael Jackson was a pioneer for African Americans, dance, and pop music. This is one of the first – if not the first – zombie music video, and in my book it’s still the best.

You can watch the full video here. Like many of the official videos, embedding is disabled and I just ran with the best version that I could find and embed. It’s a short movie in its own right (like most of MJ’s videos), and a damn good one at that.

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I have many future issues of VF planned, but this one definitely takes the cake for the most time spent on research and writing. (I’d estimate it at 6-7 hours total). I had a lot of fun doing it. I hope that I’ve introduced you all to some new music as well as brought back a lot of fond memories.

In the coming weeks, I will be going into more than just video games. (Hell, I’ve already started expanding!) I’ve been reading books and watching movies. Games will probably take up the majority of the content. Next week will almost certainly be a movie – I haven’t decided which one just yet.

If you’ve been enjoying (or not enjoying) Voodoo Farming, please say so in the comments. I will respond to some of them in future issues, and I’d especially like to prove to skippy (and myself) that this little writing endeavor of mine isn’t a waste of bandwidth.

Thanks a bunch for reading. See you guys next week!

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Ihmhi is a developer for Fortress Forever, a free, fast paced Team Fortress mod for Half-Life 2.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Ihmhi, Voodoo Farming. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.