"Magnum Bullets"
The second of the Dan Avidan/Knights of the Light Table music videos @krinsbez comissioned is for a Mexican techno band called Night Runner. "Magnum Bullets" came out in 2017, but didn't get its animesque music video until 2020. Not sure what the timeline with Dan Avidan's relationship with this band was. Anyway, let's check it out.
An anthropomorphic fox-ish humanoid lays under a strobing disco light, dead or unconscious, splashed with a liquid that could be blood, booze, or vomit; the color palette makes it hard to tell which, and therefore how grave this situation is. However, going by the title of the song, I should probably assume the worst.
The circle marks on its shirt and forehead could still mean anything, at this point.
We see a robotic goat-like humanoid handling a briefcase full of gold bars, and then it smearing itself against a...demon? Some kind of very strange figure that's framed as being a crime lord or something.
He's a stag, I think? Like, a demonic stag made of hovering crystaline shards, with a gigergoat GF? The opening shots made me think this was just going to be plain old furries, but no, the character design is considerably weirder than just that.
As the synthwave picks up and the low, inarticulate vocals begin, we return to the bloodied fox-person and see that it is indeed a dead body. The club or wherever it is has been pretty brutally shot up, and there are dead fox people strewn all around, some with much more obvious gunshot ones than that first one we saw. Some other fox-people have just entered the shot-up building, and are huddled over the dying and/or shedding anguished tears over the dead.
The fox who seems to be in charge - the one in the foreground with the leather jacket above - abruptly stands up from his dead family member or girlfriend or whatever, her blood on his paw, and gives the others a look of determination. The vocal moaning gives way to lyrics.
“A dark and moonless night
Has never felt so right
An empty mirror only shows what’s left inside
Lost in the city street
Electric tapestry
The neon beckons me beyond its ghostly light”
There's an artsy montage here that I had to rewatch a couple times in order to properly follow. It's a juxtaposition of the organized crime syndicate let by deerdemon living it up with the profits of their brutal trade, and the surviving foxes preparing their retaliation. A tray full of expensive cocktails at deerdemon's penthouse party becomes the clip of a revolver being loaded by Greaser. The grill of deerdemon's fancy antler-themed pimp car becomes a deadly-looking prosthetic lobster-claw being fitted to the stump of another fox who lost his hand (and one of his eyes, now covered by an eyepatch) in the shooting. A stripper pole at another mob party becomes the blade of a katana being polished and sharpened by the vixen in a silly fisherman's hat. There's a final shot of the mob boss and his paramour enjoying the high life of gold and murder, juxtaposed against the three foxes about to embark on their mission of revenge.
kitsune vs wendigo come on lets fucking do this
The vulpine trio creep through a sewer tunnel or water cave or something, and then start ascending a forgotten service staircase into the sublevels of Don Digo's skyscraper.
“No longer I pretend
The staircase I descend
Will lead me anywhere but my unscripted end
My heart and hands collide
The gun lays at my side
Too late to turn back, only fate’s left to decide”
Another period of wordless chanting and moaning accompanies an extremely aRtSy shot of Grease firing a bullet through a field of backlit bodies and paraphernalia to shatter Digo's fancy ballroom chandelier.
Ah, title power. Magnum bullet gotta carry some extra narrative force, you know?
Artsy color-vortex mode ends again, bringing us to the foxes having just kicked in the door and ruined Digo's nice chandelier. The ballroom is full of thugs from a wide range of species, running the spectrum from fully organic to fully robotic with all sorts of weird cyborg mixtures in between.
“Magnum bullets
Settling a score
Magnum bullets
Kicking down the door”
Also, for some reason the briefcase full of gold is just sitting there in the middle of the floor lol.
Starting to think the foxes are some sort of disenfranchised minority that the established crime syndicates have decided make an easy target. There's definitely attention being called to the good guys all being from one species that isn't represented among the baddies as best I can tell.
Anyway, cue fight scene. It's bright, energetic, and confusing in much the same was as the space battle in the last video. But, by that same token, it's also entertaining to watch, even if it isn't easy to follow per se. Knights of the Light Table know what they're good at, and they seem confident in letting that carry the show over the bits they aren't as good at. They seem to be good at this calculation, because I've enjoyed their fight scenes so far.
And like, when you have shots like this, it makes it pretty clear that this is less of a real fight scene and more of a violent impressionist painting that can move:
They work their way through the minions, and finally the foxes corner Don Digo, who has picked up that briefcase of gold and appears to be willing to defend it with his life. I'm not sure the foxes actually have any interest in his money, though, even if some or all of it was stolen from them to begin with, so he might be handicapping himself unnecessarily by holding onto it during the fight.
“Back up the stairs again
I am a different man
A broken mirror only shows as best it can
Running in shoes that shine
With blood that isn’t mine
A staining trophy of the battles I’ve survived”
He's a pretty damned good fighter, able to hold off Eyepatch and Hat simultaneously while still holding onto his treasure. However, Greaser has just finished off his last handful of minions, and is now approaching the melee to get a clear shot at Digo with that magnum of his.
Dang, the lyrics for this part:
“No longer I defend
The choices I pretend
Could make amends that heal the loss of precious time
My conscience paralyzed
Against the rising tide
Of haunting memories that drown a wasted life”
Is Greaser about to choose greed over justice and shoot all three of them now to take the gold for himself? It kind of sounds like that might be about to happen.
No, I guess not! Digo manages to disarm the other two foxes and knock them over. He raises a shard of Hat's broken sword and prepares to drive it through both of their bodies, but in so doing gives Greaser that clean shot he'd been scrambling for. He fires. His bullet has a little homunculus embodying his rage and grief at losing his loved one riding on top of it Dr. Strangelove style as it sails through the air and into Digo's gold-vault of a heart.
It's a perfect shot. Deerman is down.
Slow motion bullet time as the big boss slowly keels over, and the vocals return to their low, moaning refrain.
“Magnum bullets
Always wanting more
Magnum bullets
Closing every door”
He hits the ground, and his "flesh" winks out like a hologram. Like he was just being projected by his fancy suit. Also, I didn't realize how fucking huge he was until this shot:
I could tell he was big, but not THAT big, holy crap. "Wendigo" is right.
As the sun rises behind the penthouse window, Eyepatch takes the briefcase and Hat inspects the body. Greaser, meanwhile, just trudges slowly out of the room, not interested in the loot or the consequences of their actions. He just wants to grieve his dead loved one in peace. The end.
The narrative was a lot simpler and less ambitious for this one. Very simple, familiar story, so nothing as high-concept and abstract as "alien monolith steals the literal stars out of the sky" for me to misinterpret. I also find Avidan's voice much less intrusive when he's doing this low, slow-moving song than I did with "Starlight Brigade's" more bombastic vocals. It's also fairly catchy in its own way, and shares a commitment to its own (very different, but even more heavily stylized) aesthetic.
But, for all that, I also don't find it as memorable - either musically or visually - as Starlight Brigade. I found it easier to engage with, but I also found it less interesting. Not that it's BAD at all. I liked both of them. Just, I find it weaker, even if it has better balanced sound and possibly tighter fight scene animation.
Also, unlike the perfect marriage of music and video that "Starlight Brigade" benefited from, I feel like this one kind of fell out of sync at the end. The music ends on a low mournful fade-out, and the final stanza is about corruption and regret, but the visuals don't really suit that. The foxes won without making any big moral compromises or becoming worse people, as best I can tell. There's no indication of, eg, police closing in and forcing them to choose between surrender and honorable suicide by leaping off the tower or something. No visual focus being devoted to the suffering of the gang members or their own loved ones, hinting at a cycle of revenge. The heavyhanded gold motif with the boss and his briefcase made me think this was building up to a Pardoner's Tale ending, but nope, that doesn't happen either. It almost feels like a miscommunication. Greaser is still mourning his loved one, but like...there was never any hope of THAT changing. Or even that he'd ever thought killing the boss would make him feel that much better. It just felt off.
Anyway, like I said, I very much enjoyed "Magnum Bullets" despite these fairly minor shortcomings. And, after seeing both videos, I'm definitely eager to check out more from Knights of the Light Table.
