Behind the Video: Judgement Day's "Cobra Strike" (AKA "Violin Hero")

The video for "Cobra Strike" came from one simple idea: VIOLIN HERO. Judgement Day is a violin, cello and drums metal band, so how could we not do a Violin Hero video? The original concept was pretty basic: Judgement Day would be playing on a video game screen with animated Guitar-Hero-like notes streaming down, and little kids would be playing along in front of their TV sets with plastic violin controllers. I thought this would be pretty cool; you get a crazy string metal band, you get kids going nuts and you get animated Guitar Hero notes, which always seem to be pleasantly mesmerizing.

When I pitched the idea to our director Zzalgern0n, he thought it was cool but maybe not quite enough to keep a video interesting for a full 3 and a half minutes. We started brainstorming about ways to give the video more of a story. The question we asked ourselves was "what would happen if there really was a Violin Hero game?"

The answer was obvious: IT WOULD BE THE MOST POPULAR CULTURAL PHENOMENON OF ALL TIME. Everyone would be playing it. Kids, adults, hipsters, jocks, Egyptian people, naked fat guys, the devil, everyone! The people who couldn't get it would be rioting. Offices would shut down because everyone would be playing the game instead of working. Wars would break out. And what would happen when Violin Hero II came out? Forget about it!

So that was the concept. We chose Corba Strike to be the song for the video because it is probably the craziest song we have ever written. It's fast, in your face and changes meters almost every measure. We thought it would be both the most the difficult and the most fun song to play as a level in a game.

Now we just had to figure out how to make this all happen. We were very lucky to have Zzalgern0n as the director. He's a total DIY juggernaut who does his own green screen and special effects and he was able to do this whole video for pretty much a burrito-budget. We had a ton of other great artists who donated their talents as well, including a graphic designer who created the Violin Hero box, a miniature set designer who built the game stage, a musicologist who helped compile a list of the most shredding violin songs of all time for the level select screen, and an animator who made the notes come down the screen.

It was really important to us that the animated notes line up with the song, so I wrote it all out on sheet music with the note heads in different colors to give our animator, Mike Mayfield a solid road map. He actually finished an animation for the whole song even though we only use it for a handful of the shots in the final video. He told me that as soon as he finished, he took out his Guitar Hero controller and played along. Hopefully at some point we can release a band-only version of the video which has the full animation through the whole thing; then everyone could play along!

There are a ton of little sight gags that run through this whole video like cameos from Godzilla and Obama. Most of them were Zzalgern0n's ideas. That stuff is all really fun and gives the video a lot more replay value. I've seen it probably over 100 times now and I'm still finding little Easter eggs here and there. The opening scene is a parody of one of my favorite YouTube videos, N64 Kid. That video was the only time I have ever seen anyone as excited about something as people would be about Violin Hero.

I'm so glad that people have been liking this Cobra Strike video and sharing it with their friends. It's pretty interesting that you can make a video now with home cameras and no budget and it can be just as popular as a huge, $40,000 film. On the internet creative ideas carry more weight than large budgets, which is great for independent bands, and in my opinion great for fans as well.

Now that you know the story behind this video, you can watch it for yourself - right here!

Preview and Purchase Judgement Day CDs

Judgement Day MP3 Downloads