The video for Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton's collaboration with the late Chester Bennington has more than one ghost in it.
Perhaps the most compelling track on Anesthetic, the new solo album by Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton, is Cross Off, featuring vocals by late Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington. This is in part because the song is a banger that walks an awesome line between hard rock and heavy metal, and showcases Morton's incredible playing. But it's also the presence of Chester's voice from beyond the veil, singing about dealing with turmoil and mental illness, that lends the track an eerie poetry. The public seems to agree, with the song putting Bennington back on Billboard charts years after his death.
The video for Cross Off drives this point home. The loaded meaning of Chester's vocals doesn't seem lost on director Roboshobo, who uses the video to tell a story of a man dealing with his own strange, invisible demons. But coupled with that are live shots of the song being performed by Mark, Trivium's Paolo Gregoletto and Alex Bent...and an empty microphone, with no singer to speak of. The dread language of this is powerful and clear: there is no replacing Chester, and it is tragic that the demons won.
Get goosebumps watching the video for Cross Off below:
Speaking to Kerrang! about his collaboration with Chester, Mark said, "I didn’t know Chester, personally, before we started working on this song. When the idea came up to approach him with it, I was like, ‘Man, we can’t get him. He’s a superstar. He’s never heard my name before, never heard of my band, never heard what I do.’ And Josh was like, ‘No way, I bet he knows, we’ll never know if we don’t ask him.’ And sure enough, I was on his radar. He heard the song and fell in love with it.
"And, like… I don’t really get starstruck. In my line of work, I’ve been around some real famous people. But sitting at a table, and co-writing a song with Chester Bennington — more than his level of celebrity, it was seeing a guy like that at the place where his career was, being so creatively honest and open with me, in terms of what we were writing about, being able to take me saying, I love this part of your idea, and I’m not sure about this’ — you can’t plan for that, you can’t buy it, you can’t teach it."
Hear more about this stellar team-up in our video conversation with Mark:
Mark Morton's Anesthetic is out now on Spinefarm Records. Mark will be taking the album on the road later this month with Light The Torch and Moon Tooth, so make sure to catch him at one of these dates:
March 2019
13 Richmond, VA – The Broadberry
14 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
15 Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
16 Montreal, QC – L’Astral
18 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
19 New York, NY – The Gramercy Theatre
21 Chicago, IL – Bottom Lounge
23 Colorado Springs, CO – The Black Sheep
25 West Hollywood, CA – The Roxy Theatre
26 Phoenix, AZ – Club Red
