A2 Media Coursework - Research of Current Media Available

With my brief selected, I am now going to research into the areas included in the brief. This will be:

-Music Videos

-Band websites

-Publicity of albums

-Album covers.

I will also be looking at the conventions and stereotypes involved in different music types; and how/if this affects the publicity and music videos released.

Band Websites

-LeATHERMOUTH

A promotion for the release of the band's first (and latest) album.

LeATHERMOUTH is a hardcore band from New Jersey, America, that is well-known for its heavy guitar parts and screaming vocals. I am going to look at their official website and see if their music type is reflected through it or not.

Below: A print screen of the homepage for the band's official website.

All we can see on this homepage is the band's logo, their name in the theme of an American flag and the pages of the website listed beneath the masthead. The pages are listed as: Shows, News, Links, Noise and Badwords. The fact that there is a lack of formality creates a sense of attitude almost immediately which fits in with the band's punk/hardcore agenda. There is also a lack of band photographs which makes them a mystery to the people who view the website.

The band's attitude seems to fit in with their violent lyrics and the website also links in with this idea of violence they have. When we click onto any of the pages, only certain lettering from the masthead is shown. This is a subliminal message. For example, if we click on the page Shows we see:

But, if we hover over the lettering (to return to the homepage), we see:

This happens on all of the pages, coming up with words such as: RaT and THReAT.

This all seems to link in with the band's attitude. However, their violent lyrics and subliminal messages presented on the website all conform to a stereotype of the music they produce. This stereotype is negative and assosciates such bands with violence, satanism and simply loud untalented, unorganised noise.