DISTURBED's 'Land Of Confusion' Clip To Leave 'Lasting Impression' With MTV Audience

March 16, 2006

Todd McFarlane — the comic-book artisan behind "Spawn" and the entrepreneur who's built himself an action-figure empire — recently spoke to MTV.com about the task of directing the video for DISTURBED's hard-rockin' take on the classic GENESIS hit "Land of Confusion".

McFarlane hopes DISTURBED's video will leave as lasting an impression with today's MTV audience. But he'll be taking a different aesthetic approach to his "Land of Confusion". Rather than working with puppets — as was the case with the original "Land of Confusion", which debuted in 1986 — he's got a team of animators to help bring his treatment to life.

"Music videos try to tell too nice a four-minute story, and I think there are only a handful that are effective," said McFarlane, who helmed PEARL JAM's "Do the Evolution" and KORN's "Freak on a Leash".

"So you come up with symbolic stuff and metaphors for things, and you play it to the music. And they're digging the music and digging the video, and whether it all makes complete and utter sense is less of a concern to me than that, at the end of it all, the [audience] goes, 'Ah, that was wicked.' "

According to McFarlane, the video will feature several of the miscreants who grace the cover of DISTURBED's latest album, "Ten Thousand Fists". McFarlane worked with Greg Capullo on the album art and says that a number of the characters were inspired by actual people, including Zakk Wylde, Hunter S. Thompson and BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi. The video's hero will of course be "The Guy," the humanized form of DISTURBED's menacing logo.

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).