Hourglass is a track of Set It Off's latest album 'midnight' which came out in February 2019. A music video to accompany the song came out this weekend and it's everything that I could have hoped for.
The narrative to the video wasn't clear cut and explained but that's expected with Set It Off especially with the other more surreal and impressionist music videos from midnight. While watching it the first time I had almost no idea what was happening as the 'narrative' is difficult to follow but by the second viewing I'd already started to come up with theories and at this point I have about 100.
When I realised that only Cody Carson (Set It Off's frontman) was in the video I was a little disappointed as I would have liked to see the other members and some performance footage mixed in but it didn't take away from the video too much and I still really enjoyed it.
Cody always gives his all in music videos and I have to admit that his acting was on point yet again as well as his singing performance footage. Some of my favourite parts were when he was running away and when he was banging on the glass to get to the other side, the emotion that he portrays is almost perfect and I love that he doesn't hold back in music videos.
The aesthetics of the video were also on point, the black against the white of the sand and blue sky was the perfect blend and created a great contrast to represent purgatory. The blood red on the glass and Cody's hands also created a great contrast especially when it was introduced into the colour palate so suddenly. Sand imagery to represent the hour glass and the whole theme of time running out was shown beautifully not only with the desert setting but also Cody running the sand through his hands to mimic the hourglass and album cover.
Arial shots were used throughout which were amazing and helped to show the contrast even more as he stood out in black against an even larger background of sand. The pace of the whole video was consistent and fit with the song well partnered with the seamless edits that held everything together and allowed for effects to be added as the hooded figures surrounded Cody. Canted angles were also used to add a new level of disorientation and meaning to the video as he tried to figure out where he was and what was happening.
The ending of the video seemed as though it was setting itself up for another video where more could be explained, I couldn't be more exited if this is true to see where it goes next and what else will happen.
Set It Off have been one of my favourite bands for a while now and I've been lucky enough to see them in concert, which was beyond amazing, so I couldn't be happier with this new video and can't wait to see which song they create a video for next.