Hurricane, 30 Seconds to Mars
Eurgh. There’s no way to intriguingly weave a review of Hurricane that will leave you guessing and tantalised. Quite simply, Hurricane is the worst music video ever produced. It’s one of the most tortuous 13 minutes you’re likely to spend. If you thought Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was breathtakingly up-itself, then you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen Hurricane.
Everything about this clip is wrong. Before we’ve moved beyond the drone of the wanky, intro strings, Euro-babble voiceover, and the name of the bloke moronic enough to admit to producing this tripe, we’re confronted by a brooding, storm-hit New York; bloke fanging it on a motorcycle; hairy band bloke walking on a subway train track; mysterious, Manhattan manhole cover; American flag struck by lightning; pet mouse in a cage; a cute Fuji pocket camera. What?!
And just when you think your fingernails are gripping onto the merest thread of an inkling of what the heck is going on, more incomprehensible mayhem ensues: a fast-cut edit of a leather-clad sado-nun belting someone upside the noggin will flash across the screen like some novelty nutjob. Or alternatively, beardy band bloke wanders past a multi-faith book-burning bonfire. He looks confused. My oath he should be confused, he should in fact be screaming — get me out of this ostentatious, undergraduate creep-pic and hook me up with Justin Timberlake for a Yogi Bear duet!.
If at college you thought Betty Blue was the best movie ever made then you may well make it all the way to the end of Hurricane. And if you feel the cavalcade of pretentious booby on display, and the breathless Eurodoggerel gives Hurricane some arthouse credentials…
then snap out of it. It’s tosh. Intolerable, execrably pretentious twaddle.
Still not entirely convinced? Okay, try this stanza on for size: “There I was standing on the edge of the abyss, peering long, I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no more to ever dare to dream before.” Huh?!
Most children grow out of the “and then I woke up” conclusion to their essay writing before they leave primary school. Not these guys. The surreal schtick is wielded more brutally than a leather truncheon in the Hellfire Club.
30 Seconds to Mars deserve a lifetime of handcuff-wielding loopy groupies. May their audiences be populated by wild-eyed nutcases trying to pass on keys to their chastity belts with some face-munching pashing. Sorry to be so vicious, but this band deserves to pay — bigtime — for foisting this depraved, risible muck on a world that could do without it.
Okay, you can flush the toilet now. — CH.