Exclusives
KING 810 are the “Alpha & Omega” (Exclusive)
Flint, MI metal band KING 810 is considered by many to be one of the most dangerous acts currently in the scene. Remember two years ago when they brought masked gunmen to the stage at Rock on the Range? Or how about when they were arrested on “…charges of assault, with intent to do bodily harm“? Yes, there are those who find these events to be simple theatrics, a ploy to generate controversy surrounding a name rather than the music.
But as one digs deeper and begins actually listening to what this group has to say, you’ll find that they have a lot more to them than meets the eye. At the very least, they’re proving that they’re more than just another clickbait headline band that doesn’t offer the goods. In fact, they’re much more than that.
That brings us to today’s premiere for their track “Alpha & Omega”, which appears on the upcoming album La Petit Mort or A Conversation With God. The video mixes modernized religious imagery, specifically Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, with headlines relating to the spate of child abuse cases that were covered up by the Catholic Church over the past several years.
Vocalist David Gunn commands the video, his physical dominance matched by the ferocity and intensity of his voice, all while the band performs with unbridled passion. Meanwhile, at the “last supper”, the band and their cohorts eat a gruesome and nauseating meal, their luxury matched only by the disgusting air of such opulence in such a terrible and dilapidated surrounding. Additionally, there is a short story of three children chasing a priest, aiming to exact their revenge as he begs and pleads, hands covered in blood.
It’s not an easy video nor is it an easy subject. But just as KING 810 doesn’t shy from the headlines they generate, we don’t shy away from the tense or uncomfortable.
Below is the video and underneath that is an interview with Gunn about the video, it’s meaning, and more.
You can pre-order La Petit Mort on physical formats right here or digitally via iTunes.
Why was this controversial topic chosen as the focus of the video?
The imagery for the video was pretty built into the song. Since the band’s inception, we have always built the songs out thoroughly, as having an accompanying film or handful of films; a color pallet, a mood or an attitude – a physical look and personality if you will. So as the audio is being crafted, all of these things are being articulated. We could have a few people, a height, a weight, a personality, a gender or a list of films, paintings and sculptures or even cities, towns and countries, smells and feels assigned to a piece before a single riff is introduced. With this process we never sit back to decide on controversial topics to tackle for videos.
On top of all this, the video is also an additional opportunity to convey the messages the song carries. The lyrics are a bit more narrow than the imagery, the song is very directly aimed at all these stupid little pussy kids with the tattoos on their faces living some fantasy lifestyle on the internet or in front of the camera. The video is a broader, more important worldly view that needs to be addressed but they work together to complement each other. As artists it’s our responsibility.
What confuses me is how music is becoming a safe haven. A place to go in which to hide from the real world. It is taboo and it is shunned to discuss politics and sex and racism or controversial topics in music. Artists are constantly advised to steer clear of these issues. People’s lives are shit enough that they want somewhere to go to get away from the world. This is bullshit. Your life is insulated enough, especially with the westernization moving across the globe. You have it easy enough as people so fuck you. Music is not your safe haven with all the laws of the real world attached to it. In fact, in our world it’s the exact opposite.
The video mirrors Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, although with a more modern twist. Why this particular image?
Aside from aligning ourselves with good company, i.e. Da Vinci, who is an inspiration on many levels, this was the very simple and straightforward sensible way to represent the idea of both the lyrics in the song and the imagery for the video and, ultimately, the message of the package. Much of the things we do work on many different levels. Aesthetically the look of all the color on the table and the strong iconic suggestion in the imagery is appealing. That’s the instant gratification the layman (pun intended) may appreciate.
On top of this it ties in with the ethos of KING. Da Vinci’s life itself was plagued with controversy. For example, when he would do his cadaver work to explore anatomy in greater detail, this was a very controversial hobby back then to cut open the dead for these reasons. So the parallels go deeper with the man and the work and who we are and our own work and who we choose to align ourselves with. There are hundreds of identifiable likenesses in what he did and in what we are doing.
KING 810 is not known for shying away from controversy or intense themes. Rather, it feels like you address these topics and themes head on in the hopes of drawing more eyes to them. What do you think you can bring to the discussion regarding the sex abuse scandals with the Catholic Church that hasn’t been said before?
I feel the question isn’t in the answer here regarding drawing more eyes to them. Rrather it’s drawing a specific kind of eye to the subject. I don’t believe I can bring to the table new things to be said about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. That is not possible nor does it matter. The topic is not up for debate or interpretation. When it is commonplace for priests to molest children, that is wrong. Whether you want to call it moral absolutism or whatever, these things simply should not exist. When these things happen there should be no two sides. When the scandals come out and there is a line drawn in the sand with the family on one side and the church on the other, already that is a loss. There is no progress there, there is no victory and everyone loses. There should be on one side an ostracized priest and on the other side the rest of the world.
But as I said I don’t believe I can bring anything new to the table on this but it is one goal to broaden the consciousness of the community we are in. The world is a sad joke. It reminds me constantly of the Mike Judge film Idiocracy. There was a popular movie on this very subject with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep called Doubt. This was a big, popular movie that won awards. Another example is a movie called The Big Short – this is another big movie that was well received by the public and also won awards, etc. Yet everyone continues living with the blindfold on. Sure they may mention this on their Twitter or something stupid one drunk night but it doesn’t get much beyond that. Can films about priests fucking little kids and films about the rigged economy, just to name a couple, move people more than a Twitter post or a mention in a passing conversation on a weekend boat trip or something stupid like that?
And that’s what we’ve used this vehicle we have for. Not to bring new material to the table, there is very much already enough evidence on the table that is not what we need. I feel the heavy music community are amongst these types of blind eyes and that is for the time being our primary audience. This is very much woven into the fabric of the record as a whole. For example, the album deals with sex a lot, which is still taboo in heavy music. This is puzzling. Strangely enough the most “extreme” and “lawless” and “aggressive” genre of music appears to have the smallest jail cell to live in with the most rules and most restraints. This song, video and album is just another push on those walls.
As a Michigan boy myself, I constantly see and hear about the ways that Flint is trying to improve itself. However, it’s still a widely recognized dangerous city, one that should be avoided by those who don’t know or respect its culture. How do you feel that KING 810 is helping redeem the city?
Always good to talk to a Michigan boy. Helping to redeem the city is a fool’s errand. The city is a fuckin’ joke as far as its politics, as far as its structure, etc. We are merely faces in the crowd ourselves. We make a little noise for ourselves and for our friends, for these people that enjoy that noise. It is a given that we represent for our city. That’s just who we are. Of course we don’t mind if people find valuable things in our songs and if it sheds light on issues as we’ve said before, but I’m of the belief that I would have better luck talking to a dog than I would a man at this point.
This is a very deep issue when you ask about what we are doing to redeem Flint. We are four kids from Flint. I’m not playing the victim and suggesting a single individual cannot change things, but a city has officials, has a government, has politics, belongs to a state with a governor, belongs to a nation with a president, etc. It is often the case that the redeeming falls in the hands of the people. That is the case in Flint and in every city, that is the case in America and across the world. The system fails the people and the people react and in turn cannibalize each other and ultimately take the fall. When this is done the people also have to bail out the system while trying to live and survive. This is done from a small scale like Flint to a large scale across the world. When the government poisons our water, who filled up semis and sent them to Flint? The people. Whether it be more fortunate celebrities or whoever. When the big banks fall who is there with the relief and properly deemed ‘Bailout?’ The people.
Let me enlighten you stupid fuckers. That is not constitutional. That is not American. That is not capitalism. It’s capitalism when the money is coming in and when its working, but then when the system fails, the system shifts to what more resembles socialism and/or communism. I think that is the big misunderstanding here. The buzzword that everyone must avoid at all costs that we see on the news, that everyone is afraid of, is SOCIALISM, is COMMUNISM. When the big banks go under for writing a bunch of bullshit house loans or when GM goes under because it’s a bullshit company and there is a ‘Bailout’ THAT IS NOT CAPITALISM. For example, if Apple makes a shit iPhone because its genius has passed away and the integrity of the brand plummets and the public turns its back on the company as a whole, there is no ‘Bailout’ for a company like that.
This is the current state of nature however and we’re tired as a people of having to fix a fucking city or a shitty company or a state or a bank or a country that we did not break.
What’s next on your plate? Aside from a bunch of fish and other unpleasant looking meats, that is…
What’s next on my plate is a couple pansies people call our peers… a couple politicians… and maybe a couple corrupt policemen. Fuck ’em.
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Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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