Awful Metal Video: The Man-Eating Tree - Out of the Wind

If you can take special note: I have removed the "of the Week" from "Awful Metal Video of the Week", leaving only "Awful Metal Video". This is a clear indicator of my blog's progression and unparalleled dominance in the world of true metal blogging. I am now streamlined, precise, and moving at the speed of light. I am a perfectly efficient true metal machine, oiled by the blood of poseurs. For every "of the Week" I cut out of my weekly bad music video review titles, I can cut out exactly 1.5 seconds of wasted time, and focus those precious moments on providing you with content so brutal, you'll cry black and shit your organs.

If there is anything that writing a weekly review of heavy metal and core music videos has taught me, it is that all metal music videos are terrible. I will never ever, run out of videos to talk about. If it's not some sort of performance video with a lot of fat-faced goroupies (short for gorilla groupies) and "look at my t-shirt" shots, it's some video director taking advantage of 3-5 minutes of song time to make a short gay art film and be expressive with our favorite music. We're going to yet again, experience the latter, with a music video for Finnish ambient-metal band, The Man-Eating Tree.

Jesus Christ. It's a beach video. I don't really understand the artistic symbolism of beaches, but metal bands are apparently all about getting sand in their expensive instruments, amplifiers, and of course, asscracks, so the director can make some point that nobody gets anyway. If I was in an established metal act, and some douchey director approached me about being on a beach, I'd be like "Sure. Let's go chill at the beach and talk about where we're shooting my real music video." Don't bring your guitar to the god damn beach. As a former electronics technician, I'll be the first to tell you that sand gets in, and destroys everything. My axe is my child. Art can suck it. Nice tribal guitar strap, bassist.

Now we have this classy vintage car driving down Finland's biggest highway. Out of the vehicle steps a traditional Finnish married couple. I say this, because the man is wearing an enormous wool cable-knit sweater and looks twice her age, and the woman looks beaten and wears muddy rags. They grimace at one another and share stern glances. Eastern European romance at its best.

The Man-Eating Tree reveals to us that its no stranger to the concept of Mandatory Babes on Keyboards. Heidi Maata (add umlauts wherever possible) is certainly nice to look at, but unfortunately we don't get to do much of that. The performance shots of the video are centered more around vocalist Tuomas Tuominen playing creepy hands with the camera. I don't think TMET is really a bad band, by any means, but what is up with this dude's singing? His vocals dip, quiver and wobble like Bjork and Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries started a band together.

"SkiiiIIIiin, AAaaAAaND FRAAaa-YEeell BoOoOoOOnes..."

Back to our lovely couple, having a pretty vicious argument on the beach. Did that little thing just shove that full grown man on his ass? Holy shit. Either that dude is an enormous pussy, or she's more of a scrapper than I first gave her credit. If she's capable of dominating the relationship so easily physically, how come she's the one wearing rags and no shoes? What's there really to fight about here anyway?  Did they have a fiery disagreement about who's better at freaking out in nature than the other? They part ways to put their abilities to the test.

1:30 - Tuominen: "Boo."


This guy may look like he's going absolutely nuts right now, but I can tell you first hand that grabbing small logs and large branches then smashing the shit out of the first tree you can find with them is incredibly therapeutic. I can't remember the last fight I got in with my girlfriend where I didn't have to go out and do this.  I strongly recommend you try it the next time yours mouths off at you. Trees can't call the cops and lie about everything. With me, instead of a large pine, it's usually the first guy in a Shadows Fall shirt I see, but it has the same calming effect. Fortunately for this gentleman, none of the trees he's attack are Man-Eating Trees. How disappointing. Don't tell me you weren't hoping for the same thing this whole time.

I wouldn't advise climbing a tree (particularly one designated as the type to eat to a man) while you are barefoot. Splinters aren't a joke. If you're going to be an adult and scale a large old tree for no reason other than to get over (npi) a lover's quarrel, then utilize proper footwear. Perhaps that argument on the beach from before was about who can dig the best hole. Just between you and me, it doesn't look like there was enough 'hole-digging' going on in the bedroom between these two, if you catch my drift.

I won't reveal in detail what happens at the end of the music video. Let's just say that the tree-hitting was for practice. The end of The Man-Eating Tree's Out of the Wind video is kind of like in the movie Freddy Vs. Jason. Specifically, how there were alternate endings with who emerges victorious from the ultimate fight. One where Jason wins and vice versa. To be perfectly honest, regardless of what ending you saw in Freddy Vs. Jason, no matter what happened, Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland still ate machete. So everybody won.