Chosen by Monk

The Uber Rock Approved stampWell, it looks like the rays of light at the end of the dark tunnel that has been the past 14 months of isolation and generally being shit upon from great heights may be growing brighter day by day, with the vaccination programme being rolled out with increasing pace and the various roadmaps seeming to actually present some form of direction and pathway back to at least a semblance of the normality we enjoyed before the pandemic wrecked chaos on our collective and individual lives.

But, despite all the doom and gloom which has prevailed upon us over the past year and a bit, one positive has remained constant – and that is the amount of terrific new music which has come our way, as artists the length and breadth of the Überverse rise to the challenge of entertaining us and raising our spirits higher than the International Space Station at the peak of its orbit… And there definitely is the promise of plenty more to come, if the inbox here at ÜRHQ is anything to go by…

In that context, as the rock ‘n’ roll year that is 2021 somehow sneaks deeper into its fifth month, with its DMs firmly planted in the mire and muck of the chaos around it, there has been a healthy slew of new music pinging itself our way, and especially the continuing tsunami of submissions we receive for our coveted ‘Video Of The Week’ award… Yes, another constant throughout the vagaries of inconsistent and often hard to stomach lockdowns is the amazing level of adaptive creativity that bands and video directors have continued to show, often in the most adverse of circumstances.

After viewing all of the entries – and, yes, we did watch each and every one of the almost 200 submissions we received this past week alone – at the end of the day (or night, depending on where you are in the Überverse), there could be only one winner… And this week’s champion of champions, fighting off some extremely competition from some of the biggest names in the rock ‘n’ roll business, comes from a band whom we have supported from the very beginning of their career – right from their very first gig, in fact. Putting the hairspray defiantly back into hair metal, they are Midnite City, who are bringing the power of three to this week’s awards ceremony, with the third single from their forthcoming third album, which already is living up to its name, providing us with an ‘Itch You Can’t Scratch’…

And they’ve really pushed the envelope in terms of the clip for ‘They Only Come Out At Night’, as it clocks in at a truly epic nine-plus minutes! Yes, it’s a mini-movie, a homage to the glory days of Hammer Horror and the slick sticky-sweet teenybop trivialities which Hollywood churned out with such gay abandon in the late Eighties and through the Nineties, telling as it does the tale of a group of flatmates invited to spend the night at mysterious manor house for the chance to win a magnificent cash prize… although there’s no truth in the rumour that it was actually filmed at MC drummer Pete Newdeck’s weekend retreat:

Well, there you go. That’s our latest ‘Video Of The Week’ winner in what promises to be another traumatic year for the music business. But, as ever, we at ÜRHQ will continue to do our best to shine a light into your darker corners by bringing the brightest new rock ‘n’ roll sounds to lighten your mood and uplift your soul. So, until next week, #StayAtHome, #KeepTheMusicAlive, #CrankItUp and #StayTheFuckSafe…

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