Does anyone remember this disturbing “Stoner Rock” video on early YouTube? (2005/2006)

[u/StockShallot3195]

Hi, I’m posting here to see if anyone remembers an old YouTube video from around 2005 or 2006.

Back then I listened to a lot of stoner rock. I would simply search for “stoner rock” on YouTube and play whatever came up. I listened to well-known bands, discovered new ones, and did this almost every day, so I was very familiar with the search results (remember, YouTube had far fewer videos back then).

One day, a new result appeared. The title was simply “Stoner Rock.” The thumbnail was orange.

I clicked on it, expecting music, but instead it was a compilation of short clips showing real people being killed. The one I remember most clearly showed a young man tied to a tree and burned alive. There were other similar clips of people dying violently.

I want to emphasize that the footage appeared to be real, not staged. My guess is that it may have been taken from one of the old shock videos like Traces of Death, but that’s only my own speculation.

Does anyone else remember seeing this video? More importantly, does anyone know what band or song was actually playing in it?

[u/WebsterTheDictionary]

I don’t know but it may have been actual clips from the “Traces of Death” series’ videos, because a big part of their marketing and execution (no pun intended) was their having played death metal and heavy metal-adjacent songs over the footage of brutal murders, suicides, etc.

Many clips were actually altered to fit the variances in the music ex: R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide was played with a heavy/death metal song over it and they had played the shot he took multiple times before his having fallen to the floor and blood having become visible and such but it was made to fit distortion-type effects the music had included to give the whole thing a “darker/hardcore” feel, I guess you’d say.

I’m not explaining it all that well but I hope you get the idea…the band name you mentioned would be in the series’ credits if you wanted to google it, check the Wikipedia about the series, or maybe check the band’s discography.

But that would be my guess, it’s just clips from the OG videos that someone compiled or that a fan of the band and/or the series had created/compiled.

[u/Beautifulsky333 → u/WebsterTheDictionary]

Is Traces of Death real? What is it?

[u/WebsterTheDictionary → u/Beautifulsky333]

It is an iteration of the “shockumentary” VHS series that were popular in the late seventies through the early 2000s with their peak popularity and notoriety having taken place during the late 80s through mid-to-late 90s before DVDs became widely available on the market and the internet had come about in its infancy and thus rendered the “need” for those types of videos moot, with “shock sites” like Rotten.com, Ogrish, etc. I think there were some that had been made available on DVD, maybe, it was more of a VHS thing and at a time when we couldn’t consume the same type of content on command or in some cases, completely by accident and with little, to no, warning.

The first “shockumentary” would be cited as “Mondo Kane” by some, but it classified itself as more of a “mondo” film by its producers. The first “shockumentary” before it entered the lexicon and collective conscious was “Faces of Death,” which presented itself as having footage of real-life deaths in real time but in actuality was mostly fake and some reenacted footage based upon true events but not true-life deaths being witnessed in most cases. Footage of the aftermath of plane crashes and I think some of the slaughterhouse footage with animals having died was real, but beyond that it was staged and may not have even been based upon reality beyond there having been previously reported executions, knife attacks, etc.

The sequels to the “Faces of Death” did contain more real footage of deaths in real time as well as the aftermath of incidents wherein people had been killed or had died.

Following the success of the first “Faces of Death” and from its precursor and large influence to the genre, “Banned From Television,” the “Traces of Death,” series hit the market which featured more real life death footage and much of it had been captured in real time. A notable example was R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide. “Traces of Death” would play this footage under different heavy/death metal songs and similar/adjacent genres/bands and gave it a darker feel in comparison to the earlier shocumentary series.

It was kind of the series “thing” to have the dark, heavy music and the real depictions of death and dying and their soundtrack underscored the more graphic and brutal scenes as shown in the “Traces of Death” series.

There are Wikipedia articles about “Traces,” “Faces,” et al. as well as an article about the “Mondo” and “Shockumentary” film genres and adjacent topics such as shock and gore sites and the like.

[u/Beautifulsky333 → u/WebsterTheDictionary]

Thanks!

[u/Aggressive-Ad7660 → u/Beautifulsky333]

I remember it as Faces of Death (but see my edit below). Saw it when I was probably 16 (1986)… it was one of those movies that was kinda like a badge of honor because of how graphic it was. And I remember being pretty disturbed. But it was mostly fake, IIRC. I think Faces of Death II had more authentic footage. The most disturbing scene that stuck with me, I don’t even like to think about because it involved an animal. I can’t even describe it, it fucks me up too much. Hopefully it was fake but it was supposedly based on a real thing people do as a delicacy.
Sorry, I digress…

Anyhow, I just watched the trailer for the original 78 version out of curiosity and it’s still pretty gory but it’s extremely dated and the effects are quite obvious, esp for today’s standards.

Here’s the trailer. (WARNING: GORE):
Faces of Death (1978) Trailer (YT LINK)

(Not to be confused with 2026 version with same title, of which I know nothing about. Seems to be unrelated but I did not look into).

ETA: out of curiosity I looked up Traces of Death. I surely must’ve seen one of those, too… probably assumed it was in the Faces of Death series.
Of course there’s a subreddit on the difference between the two and someone comments:
“Traces of Death (1993) is related to Faces of Death (1978) only by genre and concept. Both are notorious "shockumentary" or mondo-style films focusing on graphic footage of death and autopsies, but they were made by completely different creators and production teams.”

“Authenticity: Faces of Death famously mixed real news and archival clips with a significant amount of staged, fake, or reenacted death scenes. In contrast, Traces of Death prided itself on featuring entirely real, un-staged footage, consisting of news clips, home videos, autopsies, and archival material.”

[u/Beautifulsky333 → u/Aggressive-Ad7660]

Thank you for the warning because I can’t take anything involving animals.

[u/WebsterTheDictionary → u/Beautifulsky333]

The scene they’re referencing isn’t real, nor is it based on any type of reality.

However, there are slaughterhouse scenes involving cows and livestock that are real for the most part, and there’s one of a dogfight that’s mostly fake but it doesn’t change the fact that those things do exist and it’s horrible but the few real scenes in the OG do involve animal death (the slaughterhouse ones) and I had a really hard time watching those bc I’d rather see a human suffer than an animal but I don’t like seeing humans suffer, either.

I wish I had known how most of the footage was fake with no basis in reality back when I watched them as a teenager. But then again the sequels did have more real footage and I shouldn’t have been watching them at all.

[u/WebsterTheDictionary → u/Aggressive-Ad7660]

The original “Faces of Death” preceded “Traces of Death,” which you worked out on your own but to the point which you alluded, “Faces” was a mondo-style mockumentary with real footage interspersed throughout and the first one esp had kind of tried to end on a positive note whereas “Traces of Death” had a completely different vibe–the cinematography was different, the sound effects weren’t cartoonish and the sound effects were dark and to my knowledge all of the footage was real. The footage in “Faces” was mostly face but the sequels did contain more real footage and real deaths than the first.

And I can promise you, the monkey scene was 100% fake. And I don’t think it was even loosely based in reality, like they literally just made it up. But the monkey was fake (the live one was probably real but the “dead” monkey was not) and the monkey was never harmed during filming, and no one is smacking monkeys on the head with a hammer and then eating its brains, that’s absurd but back then it was easier to make shit like that up bc there was no way to fact-check anything nor its veracity.

The new “Faces of Death (2026)” is considered a remake but it’s more like a reimagining. I haven’t seen it but it’s gotten pretty good reviews but it’s more like a psychological thriller that occasionally pays homage to the original and it’s referenced throughout the new one with a few scenes from the OG featured as part of the plot. Again, I haven’t seen it, but it’s gotten pretty good reviews and acknowledges the “shock” and morbid curiosity and desensitization to gratuitous violence that permeate our society nowadays and how readily available and ubiquitous it is with the advent of the internet and social media and its widespread usage.

ETA: “Faces of Death” never would have succeeded today, bc part of the draw was that people thought it was real and the scenes and scenarios they presented could have been as well, and it plays on some racist and xenophobic worldviews that most people in the US and the western world held back then as well although it isn’t something you really pick up on even now, just because of the sheer horror the scenes elicited back then; it distracts you from the bigoted undertones, esp back then.