"Hailing from Australia, S.P.K. were one of the first wave of industrial noise groups. In 1982, S.P.K. issued their music video 'Despair', which was sold mainly via mail order. Despair quickly asserted itself as something of a cult item on the underground when publications such as Re/Search began to plug it. Frank Henenlotter, director of Basket Case, once said of the film: 'When I saw the video, I thought what a fabulous thing, what a strange way of using music. Who would make a music video to such horror, with actual severed heads.' Despair consists of 60 minutes of screeching, heavily distorted guitars, electronics, and various tape and vocal effects. The graphics mutate from a series of lines running up and down the screen, into a seemingly random cut-up of images, like scenes of a sex-shop, or an autopsy. The soundtrack drives onward relentlessly. Sequences showing the mutilation of a dead cat (it's eye gouged out and its tongue sliced off) and the unspooling of intestines from a cadaver's gaping abdominal cavity are intercut with footage of SPK performing live. The frontman, in a bondage mask, bites meat from a rancid horse's head. Slides of death camps, brain operations, fetal deformities and pathological specimens take the video to its conclusion of the infamous mortuary footage: an individual, seen only as a pair of industrial-gloved hands, maneuvers a detached head to perform clumsy fellatio on the penis of another corpse. The head is replaced by a skeletal hand, woven with strings of yellowed tendon and gristle. This appendage simulates masturbation of the grey member. Some later versions of the tape (which became known as 'S.P.K.'s Human Post Mortem') were made available in two parts: the first part is just the autopsy film, the 2nd part is the same footage, but treated with visual effects and also silent so that you, the viewer, could overdub your own soundtrack."
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