Behind The Scenes: Derision Cult - Warning Signs (Official Video)

Warning Signs is Derision Cult's second animated video odyssey, birthed from a collaboration with the visionaries at Empire Animate out of Vancouver. A spiritual successor to Deaf Blood, our first animated venture that took aim at media manipulation and struck a chord that still resonates.

This time around, we wanted to inject some twisted fun into the mix, even as Mercenary Notes Pt 2 ventures into darker territory. Warning Signs emerged as this perfect storm of industrial grit and rockabilly swagger, demanding a visual trip to match its auditory assault.

We threw our favorite fever dreams into the blender: Fear and Loathing's desert haze, Beavis and Butthead's animated insanity, and the oft-forgotten madness of Bill Paxton's Martini Ranch project. Splash in some neon-drenched sci-fi, and the stage was set.

The video's a who's who of the extended Glitchmode family. We packed that bar with familiar faces: Chris Harris from Project 44, Jim Marcus of Go Fight!, Dave Kultgen and Connor Eck from Cyanotic, and Angie Kultgen, our jack-of-all-trades at Glitchmode. Reeves Gabrels is back too, his guitar work slicing through the chaos like a laser through fog. We even worked in nods to Justin Broadrick from Godflesh, who's got a blistering remix of Warning Signs in the pipeline, and Pete Berwick, Chicago's cowpunk legend, both of whom lent their talents to Mercenary Notes Pt 2.

Plot-wise, it’s a road trip gone sideways. We tear across a wasteland, ending up at the mysterious Glitchmode Ranch. There's this orb that turns everyone demonic, because in this world, why wouldn't there be? By the end, we hint at the T-800 shedding its mechanical skin for something more... human. He leaves you with the reminder that the table’s tilted and the game is rigged!

We kicked this off back in January when Warning Signs was still a raw demo, taking months to bring this beast to life. We debuted it at the Glitchmode Showcase Technoir. It was a lot of fun to play live with the video synced to us. From the stage, I noticed the audience react to every weird twist - from Robocop and Terminator's unlikely bond to Brad's guitars transforming into futuristic weapons.

The track itself is a beast to play live, especially for a guitar fiend like me. Unlike Deaf Blood, where we have to work around Chris Connelly's vocals, Warning Signs is primed to be a staple in our set for years to come, with this video riding shotgun.

Warning Signs is our creative grenade tossed into the expected, a wild trip through a landscape of our own making. It's meant to be cranked loud, letting the visuals melt into your brain as the track pounds through your speakers. In these strange times, sometimes you've got to laugh in the face of the absurd - and that's exactly what we aimed to do here. This is Derision Cult's twisted love letter to the chaos of our times, served up with a side of scorching riffs and animated mayhem.