True crime duo SKYND shared ‘Armin Meiwes’ video

Industrial-tinged and true crime-inspired electronic duo SKYND, who recently performed to huge festival crowds at Download, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park, have shared the video for the new single “Armin Meiwes.” It marked the first song from Chapter IV.

SKYND is the dark creative outlet and the alter ego of its lead singer, Skynd, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Father. They are known for taking inspiration from inexplicable and brutal criminal cases and the mystery surrounding unsolved deaths, and transforming them into songs to remind us of the darkness within the human psyche.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the pair delve into one of the most shocking stories of our time with this track and video.

Skynd shares:

“This is just a really bizarre story. The arrangement was an entirely consensual cannibalistic murder. It sounds insane on the surface, but it’s also really sad story about being lonely and engaging in an internal fight of fantasy versus reality. Meiwes didn’t have his inner animal tamed. He wanted to reach another level of climax, because fantasies that he had held since he was a little boy weren’t enough for him anymore. His urge to own someone and to fully merge with somebody trumped his common sense.”

“When I investigated the case, I watched an interview with him. Meiwes didn’t seem like the typical beast you’d imagine when you think of a ‘cannibal.’ But then again, you might ask yourself, ‘What does a cannibal even look like?’ It’s a story that hasn’t left me for years and I feel like I have finally translated it into music.”

The video was directed by critically acclaimed and Grammy-nominated director PR Brown (Korn, Slipknot, Motley Crue, Audioslave, Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Alicia Keys), who also lensed the video for the previous single “Chris Watts.” 

Brown also weighs in on the visual, saying,

“Monsters live among us. We can either live in denial and imagine they don’t exist or we can dig deeper into what makes them tick so we know what to look for. For this video, we really wanted to explore the madness, that compulsive energy behind Armin’s frame of mind. There was something particularly twisted about the idea of him being addicted to cooking shows.

“The idea was built on following his manic progression of working on a recipe. Something, that by anyone’s standard, would be a complete failure, yet in his eyes, a masterpiece of delicacy. I’m so grateful that Skynd embraced this concept and fostered the vision of something that was truly uncomfortable to even film, much less think about. I still have a hard time watching it, mainly because of the smell it conjures up while we were filming it and the believable state our actor was able to project. It felt too real.”

SKYND released Chapter I in 2018, followed by Chapter II in 2019. Chapter III was completed the aforementioned “Chris Watts,” which followed the releases of “Michelle Carter” and “Columbine.” Chapter III tallied 31 million views on YouTube and continued their exploration of the darkest and most disturbing parts of the human psyche, following their belief that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”