When Swedish metal band Sparzanza started planning the music video for the title track of their upcoming album Announcing The End, they were determined to create something different than just five guys playing their instruments in a rough setting. Both the director, Mattias Larsson, and the band are fans of the first Blade Runner movie from the '80s and wanted to pay a tribute to the upcoming movie Blade Runner 2049 that will premiere October 6th 2017. The video can be seen below.

This project was extra interesting since no one had seen the whole movie, but only had the movie trailers for inspiration. A version of a trailer to a movie that nobody’s seen was a fun idea, but also a challenge. 

In the selection of actors, Sparzanza only chose to work with actors from the area around Karlstad and Värmland. To work with Swedish actor Johan Östling was an obvious choice. Johan is known from Swedish director Ulf Malmros’ movies Smala Sussie, Bröllopsfotografen, and Mammas Pojkar. Last spring he won the Swedish celebrity version of TV show The Great Bake Off, and he is currently working as one of the leading roles in the new season of the TV series Ack Värmland that will air on Swedish TV4 this fall. Östling is a former musician colleague to the band and didn’t hesitate to act in the video, even though he still hasn’t brought back the keys to the rehearsal room after 15 years.

Anders Louthander, the Harrison Ford of Karlstad is also working as a small part in Ack Värmland this fall, is tall and strong, but the band’s guitarist Magnus Eronen managed to give him a bruise after one of the music video’s stage fights.

Sparzanza wanted to record the entire video in Karlstad and they put a lot of work into finding the right futuristic settings from the movie in the small Swedish town. Some of the settings are also interesting to Sparzanza fans, having recorded some of the scenes at the same places where the band has taken a lot of their band photos and pictures for previous album artworks. They’ve also recorded at places such as the University of Karlstad and Stadshotellet (one of the town’s well known landmarks together with the Sola i Karlsta statue).

Announcing The End will be released through Despotz Records on October 13th.

Announcing The End tracklisting:

“Announcing The End”
“Damnation”
“One Last Breath”
“Whatever May Come May Be”
“Vindication”
“The Dark Appeal”
“Breathe In The Fire”
“The Trigger”
“To The One”
“We Are Forever”
“Truth Is A Lie”

“Vindication”: