American boyhood can resemble a long induction into somebody else’s war. Strength is measured by the ability to make others submit; tenderness is seen as a liability; and young men learn to police one another before an employer, institution, or army ever needs to intervene. On “Victory in Death,” avant-garde darkwave project Mellow Code follows those instructions toward their brutal conclusion, confronting a model of masculinity designed to turn human beings into obedient bodies molded into the perfect vessels for capitalist greed and imperial power.
Led by Josh McVety and Oliver Michael German, Mellow Code opens the track with deep, processional drums and a funereal mass of synthesizers. Buzzing, bit-crushed electronics churn across the upper register while shuddering samples keep the arrangement under strain. McVety’s resonant vocal booms from a distance, suspended somewhere between lament and military command.
The track draws upon the physical machinery of early industrial music, but feels colder than EBM and graver than conventional darkwave. The body here is already bleeding out on the battlefield, with the genre’s flag lowered to half-mast. Repeated orders to “force it down” and “fall in line” turn masculinity into drill practice, while “just be a man” becomes both a taunt and a test whose only reward is further obedience. Even the title’s promised victory requires a form of self-erasure.
Mellow Code explains:
“Victory in death is a song evoking the feeling of growing up the way American culture targets boys. Preparation to be used as bodies for capital and imperialism. Fortify yourself little kid and don’t show weakness, that would be feminine or gay. Perpetuated in a cycle of abuse, boys police each other and the most conservative minded lash out at the perceived threats to that sense of “natural order”. Advertisements use the essence of porn and evoke rugged individualism to sell things but also that idea. The manosphere is only the newest mutant to spawn from this toxic path. These things feel inevitable at times but it’s not. Community and human contact is essential to humans, as is creating art. Sports are the most acceptable forms of community that also allow for some structured contact for young men. That’s why growing up as a soft art boy or boy adjacent can be hard. But if you’re lucky you find the other-ed and make art that speaks to rebellion against status quo gender existentialist bull shit. Maybe help some realize they also feel trapped by those structures.”
Shot in the high desert, the accompanying video turns that critique into an unruly nocturnal workshop. Around a campfire, a gang dressed in leather, mesh, workwear, and smeared makeup saws, drills, sands, and paints pieces of wood into oversized mallets, spears, and toy-like projectiles. Those scenes are intercut with McVety, sporting a yellow mullet and delivering the song from the cold white interior of a van, a knife resting in his hand.
Soon, a red-lit pickup carries the crew across the scrub with an enormous handmade slingshot mounted to its bed. Their target is a brightly painted wooden male dummy, equal parts carnival attraction, military mascot, and childhood invention. The friends bombard it with their homemade arsenal before closing in with clubs and axes, collectively demolishing the figure that has been built to represent inherited ideas of manhood. Orange firelight, hard headlights, flying sparks, and icy interior lighting give the desert escapade the character of a pirate raid organized by art-school outcasts.
For McVety, the production returned to the reckless ingenuity of childhood while placing that freedom in the hands of his closest creative community:
“This video was an absolute labor of love that was entirely done with and by my community of artist friends. I wanted to recapture what it felt like to be a kid when me and my freak friends would make weapons and contraptions and forts inspired by whatever movie we had just seen and often Jack Ass. Whatever felt Rad as Hell then still holds true. We built weapons and made a truck into a giant slingshot. I made a wooden dummy and my friends painted it. It was a party in the desert with the people closest to me.”
The video was photographed and co-directed by Adrian Stucker of Melankolia, with Daniel Maggio serving as co-director and editor. It stars Josh McVety, Eli Gray, Matt Hanson, Miranda Sharp, and Eric Runner, with color by Grady Colors.
Watch the video for “Victory in Death” below:
On creating the video for Victory in Death, Adrian Stucker discusses the film’s high-desert production and the internal conflict represented by its handmade weaponry:
“Serving as both Co-Director and Director of Photography for Mellow Code’s “Victory in Death,” I had the opportunity to craft a fantastically fun and highly conceptual visual narrative. The creative direction tied together the rebellious, youthful energy of The Lost Boys with the rugged, weathered aesthetic of desert-faring pirates.
Shooting out in the high desert always presents its own unique environmental and logistical challenges, but the cinematic payout is consistently worth the effort. To ground the raw aesthetic of the environment, I frequently utilized a hard, single lighting source, carving out striking, high-contrast imagery against the barren landscape. Drawing directly from Mellow Code’s actual thematic focus on fabricating custom instruments and devices, we wove that maker-centric vibe deeply into the video. The narrative visually documents the meticulous process of crafting tools from other tools, which are eventually forged into weapons. However, the story intentionally subverts the traditional use of these weapons. Instead of directing this arsenal outward at enemies, the weapons are turned inward for a deeply personal fight.
The core of the video captures Mellow Code on a mission to confront and metaphorically slaughter his own preconceived notions of masculinity. It is a visual exploration of dismantling internal barriers, illustrating that the most important battles are often fought within ourselves, ultimately making room to replace those outdated notions with the strength and love of the surrounding community.”
For Maggio, the concept also provided an opportunity to place McVety’s skills as a carpenter and fabricator directly before the camera:
“I love working with Josh. Not only does he make this wonderful, dark, hypnotic music, but he is also a master builder. He’s a brilliant carpenter who can create pretty much anything he designs. The opening shot of FACE IT (the last video we did together) is a handmade illuminated pentagram. He seemed to have made it in his spare time. I was blown away by the detail and its functionality. What can’t this guy do? For the second video, I was curious how far we could push his talents as a craftsman. He runs a shop in Alhambra and naturally works with an extremely talented, fashionable, and hardworking team. Every handmade object featured in the music video was created by the on-camera talent. You can tell they are all friends who share a professional working relationship. One of the highlights was the slingshot mounted to the top of the pickup truck. Our first launch was unsuccessful, and my fondest memory of the shoot was watching 4 cross-faded engineers troubleshoot this thing. I hope it’s as much fun to watch as it was to shoot.”
Listen to “Victory in Death” below, and order the single here.
Mellow Code is an avant-garde darkwave project led by Josh McVety and Oliver Michael German. Mechanical rhythms, new-wave vocals, EBM, house, and bright FM synthesis converge with samples gathered from the group’s fabrication workshop. The recent album Object Reality, along with tracks such as “Ich stehe im Blut” and “Face It,” develops an industrial club language in which handmade devices function as instruments, images, and extensions of the music itself.
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