Any Questions? - Strafing Children

Strafing Children was originally recorded for Any Questions? 1992 Prey For Death release but it wasn't until we were preparing for our live tour with Punch Drunk in Summer 1993 that we finally made the video for it.

We had about a month to shoot and edit 12 of 13 videos for our hour long set list. Sharing The Plasma Pool had already been completed the previous year. The final videos were then projected onto a 9' x 12' video screen and used as a backdrop of visual hallucinations for our Hypermedia Industrial Death Horror Show.

The video for Strafing Children was quickly assembled from three sources. We used aerial video footage from the first Gulf War, dive bombing and strafing scenes from an old war movie, and some classic footage that we shot at the Griffiths Compound. This final source of video was created by duct taping our camcorder onto a lazy susan and manually spinning it to capture the 360 degree dizzyingly eerie and colorful smoke filled footage of MC2P4 as he feasts upon bloodied remains.

Though we had limited time to work on this video, it turned out to be quite an effective and literal translation of the song. One of which we are still proud of today.

Any Questions? - The Face

Fueled by Ferrara Pan Atomic Fireballs and Lipton Iced Tea Mix, I churned out this song and video animation for The Face music video from Any Questions? 1992 release, Prey For Death.

This song happens to be 1 of only 2 songs (Carousel being the other) that had all its drum parts created entirely by using the Drum Editor within Cubase. Using the Drum Editor, I manually placed individual drum hits on a grid within the program and then manipulated the velocity and volume parameters. The benefit of this is that I could quickly create dynamic rhythms patterns that I could have never played behind a drum kit.

Once the rhythm track was created, I began to compose the rest of the song. For inspiration, I stared out my back window and watched the steam from the cooling towers of the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant seed the clouds. That visual backdrop was (and still is) the stimulus for many Any Questions? songs. This song is a perfect example of the dichotomy those images represent. On one hand, you have the soft and almost hopeful sounding synth string sounds which carry the song higher and higher just like the steam that rises from the cooling towers. In contrast, the song is violently interrupted by a stark, pulsing beat and a repetitious droning sample which exclaims "Pray for Death!". A reminder that the end is always near just as the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident reminded us in 1986.

Work on the video animation for this song wasn't so dichotomous. Affordable video animation that could be done at this time with home computers was very time consuming and crude by today's standards. However, this didn't deter me from spending several days of my life hammering away at my trusty Atari 1040STe to produce the animation. To this day, I'm still not quite sure how I pulled it off though I do remember the pillow of Fireball wrappers that I would lay my head down on to rest when I could no longer see clearly.

Any Questions? - Strange Days

Strange Days was the second video off our Any Questions? 2000 release, Mutation. While preparing for the Alive I Am tour in 2004, we needed to quickly shoot and edit videos for the new songs that we were adding to our set list. These songs were Evolution and Strange Days.

To tackle the video for Strange Days, we set up a location shoot in MC2P4's shed on one VERY hot Summer day in June 2004. The shed was about 10' x 10' in size and, of course, we closed the door, blocked off all the windows with black scrim, turned on the par cans and strobe lights, and blew fog all over the set. The end result was a sweat lodge of radioactivity, terror, and disgust.

We first shot the calm footage of me (Ttam Troll) wearing a clean room suit, respirator, and goggles while fake typing very poorly at a computer terminal. I, obviously, needed to work on my acting. Next, we captured the video feedback footage and then it was time for MC2P4 to don his infamous "wire costume" and put on another tour de force performance of blood, disgust, and sweat.

It is also worth noting that this video features the "$5 champy". A non-functional, custom built home stereo receiver system which I bought for, you guessed it, $5 at a used musical instrument store. When we opened up the unit to find out why it wasn't working, we discovered the previous owner's stash of crack cocaine. Unprepared and unwilling to "experiment", we contacted an appropriate disposal service.

On the final edit, we also cut in scenes from the movie Strange Days, which was the original inspiration for the song.

This was done quick and dirty, guerrilla style but it is still a favorite among us and our fans. I hope you enjoy it.

Any Questions? - Evolution

Evolution was the third video off of our Any Questions? 2000 release, Mutation. MC2P4 delivers an acting tour de force performance and is joined by Ho Magos (Ken Chandler), who provides a white faced demon cameo. You get to see MC2P4 do it all in this video. A nearly nude MC2P4 dons his infamous "wire costume", feasts upon severed heads, injects himself with re-animation reagent, is implanted with LED systems, and much, much more.

I (Ttam Troll) was behind the camcorder directing ("Do weird face shit!") and filming for most of the scenes but some additional footage was shot by Steve Olsen, Ho Magos, Brian "Who" Black, and even Jackey McConnell (she shot the outdoor snow footage). It was assembled into a final edit in 2004 when we were preparing for the Any Questions? - Alive I Am tour.

One of the locations that we shot at was the abandoned Pennhurst State School and Hospital in Spring City, PA. While shooting footage there, we were forcibly removed from the property by their security. Apparently, we were "trespassing" and we were told that we were lucky that they didn't put us in shackles and cart us off to jail.

Oh, the things we do for our art...

Any Questions? - Body Bags

Body Bags was the first video off our Any Questions? 2000 release, Mutation. We took the song's title literally and slid ourselves into large garbage bags on a very hot summer day to shoot part of this video. The video also has all of the other "classic" Any Questions? elements - gas masks, blood, violence, fog, toxic liquids, strobe lights, dismembered baby dolls (taken from my sister years ago) and, of course, severed heads!

This was shot in The Griffith Compound at The Farmhouse in 1999. Steve Olsen manned the video camera while Kelly Hoffman and Beth Ballein were running lights and shooting off fog when they weren't assisting with video or suffocating in body bags.

It was a long but very fun day!

Sharing The Plasma Pool

Sharing The Plasma Pool is our very first music video. It was assembled using footage that we shot ourselves interspersed with a couple of scenes from the horror movie The Evil Dead. Up until this point, we had been shooting a bunch of video footage but didn't have anyway to edit it together. As luck would have it in the Spring of 1991, Tim Harrell (my roommate at the time) was attending MCCC and was majoring in Communications. One day, he let me tag along with him into the MCCC video editing suites and, a couple of hours later, I emerged with a VHS tape containing our first music video.

This song also has the distinction of being the last one we created using a synthesizer sequencer (Ensoniq ESQ-1). After this, we moved onto computer sequencing using an Atari 1040STe running Steinberg/Jones Cubase 2.0.