Synopsis

In a deliberately unsettling portrait-studio setting, a succession of people pose for photographs as their faces, expressions, and bodies are warped by visual distortion. Familiar family-photo conventions gradually become grotesque: smiles turn rigid, gestures become unnatural, and the subjects appear trapped between ordinary documentation and digital nightmare. METZ perform within this unstable visual world, while grain, static, and disruptive color treatment make the images feel degraded and hostile. The result is less a conventional narrative than a corrupted collection of portraits matching the song's abrasive intensity.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was released on March 5, 2013, several months after "Wasted" appeared on METZ's self-titled debut album, released October 9, 2012.

• Its central visual idea is a photo-portrait studio transformed into something disturbing. The imagery plays on family-photo conventions, especially the artificial smile and posed group portrait.

• The video's distorted faces, static-like interference, and sickly color shifts were widely noted as a strong visual counterpart to METZ's noisy post-hardcore sound.

• The concept also engages with the idea of the "person" people construct for themselves in the digital age, using corrupted images to undermine the reliability of photographic self-presentation.

• The production was made by The Public Assembly. The listed crew includes Erika Lobko as producer, Cabot McNenly as director of photography, and Sammy Rawal and Scott Cudmore for post-production effects.

• METZ have repeatedly worked with the same visual collaborator on several videos. Alex Edkins has described that relationship as a close creative friendship whose unusual, twisted aesthetic suits the band's music.

• Contemporary coverage compared the clip to "Awkward Family Photos" viewed through a psychedelic or horror filter, an apt description of its combination of banal posing and grotesque digital manipulation.