Heavy metal and embroidery combine in
Throne’s music video for Tharsis Sleeps

Dezeen Music Project: every frame in this animated music video by London metal band Throne was embroidered onto denim patches.

Directed by Throne singer Nicos Livesey, the video for the band’s single Tharsis Sleeps required over 3000 embroidered frames, each one the size of an A5 piece of paper.

“We haven’t calculated the exact amount,” Livesey told Dezeen. “But it is roughly 45 million stitches sewn onto 200 square metres of denim.”

Livesey got the idea for the music video from the embroidered patches heavy metal fans sew onto their clothes to show support for their favourite bands. It took him over seven months to realise his idea.

“The animation was all drawn into the computer frame by frame using a tablet,” Livesey explains. “Each image was then converted to a stitch format with Wilcom DecoStudio embroidery software.”

“Each of these embroidery files were then stitched out, un-picked, neatened up and then shot under a rostrum camera. Those images were then imported back onto a computer and dropped into the edit.”

In the video, the band are a group of astronauts tasked with dropping an atomic bomb into a volcano on Mars, with the intention of raising the planet’s temperature to make it habitable for human life.

Unfortunately, things don’t quite go to plan. The band get caught up in the explosion and end up haunting the red planet as deranged ghosts.

“I wanted to tell a story of true epicness,” said Livesey. “I feel the video fits seamlessly with the music. The rawness and energy in the material between each frame seems to marry perfectly with a colossal riff.”

Throne are a heavy metal trio from London. Tharsis Sleeps is lead single from the band’s five-track EP Where Tharsis Sleeps, due to be released next week.

Read more

• Videos
• Dezeen Music Project