Watch Metallica’s Bloody, Black Metal-Channeling ‘ManUNkind’ Video
In Metallica‘s gory “ManUNkind” video, a black metal band performs the bruising track onstage surrounded by pig heads on sticks. The group’s frontman crowd-surfs, unleashes his scariest poses and slices up his arms with a knife, letting the blood flow over their fans’ faces.
Jonas Åkerlund, who previously directed Metallica’s clips for “Turn the Page” and “Whiskey in the Jar” helmed the wild “ManUNkind” video. (Not coincidentally, Åkerlund drummed for Bathory, one of the first black-metal bands.) The clip provides the exclusive first glimpse at characters from Åkerlund’s upcoming film Lords of Chaos, which is currently in production, and stars the movie’s Rory Culkin, Jack Kilmer and Sky Ferreira. Lords of Chaos, based on the book of the same name, will tell the story of Mayhem, the controversial Norwegian band that brought the black-metal subgenre to international notoriety.
Metallica plan to release music videos for each track from their upcoming LP, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, for every two hours until 6 a.m. EST on Thursday, November 17th. The album, Metallica’s 10th, is out November 18th. The band will mark the release with a “Blackened Friday” event – a twist on Record Store Day’s Black Friday – at hundreds of independent record stores across the U.S. Fans participating in the midnight sale will be eligible to win items like limited edition vinyl slip mats and posters; the grand prize winner will receive the new album in a variety of formats, including the deluxe box set and a test pressing of the record.
In August, drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to Rolling Stone about Hardwired, detailing the album’s “simpler” songs. “We introduce a mood and we stick to it, rather than songs we’ve done where one riff happens and we go over here and then over there and it becomes a journey through all these different soundscapes,” he said. “The songs are more linear. And by ‘less frenetic,’ I mean there are certainly less starts and stops in the songs. It cruises along a little bit more than the last record.”