Tokio Hotel Premiere Epic Automatic Video

Clip contains lots of robotic imagery playing up title of band's forthcoming LP, Humanoid.

By James Montgomery

Tokio Hotel fans, the wait is over.

After months of nightmares, arguments and chauffeured drives around Hollywood, Tokio Hotel finally gave fans a first full taste of the band's much-anticipated Humanoid album, premiering the video for the first single — the soaring "Automatic" — on their Web site late Thursday.

The clip, which was filmed in South Africa, is all kinds of epic, featuring the band racing across windswept plains in classic muscle cars; sweeping, helicopter-aided cinematography; a futuristic, H.R. Giger-inspired stage and a pair of robotic co-stars that sort of resemble the villainous cyborg from "Robocop 2."

We also see TH frontman Bill Kaulitz rocking out in a fur-lined leather ensemble (and wearing a massive Humanoid ring across his knuckles), and his brother Tom showing off his new cornrows. Oh, and there's a message, too — that love can save us all, or make us human (or something like that) — courtesy of those robots, who seem hell-bent on destroying one another until they embrace, and gaze out into the horizon.

The video seems to verify producer/songwriter David Jost's earlier comments that Humanoid is very much influenced by the Kaulitz brothers' newfound interest in science fiction,as he told MTV News in a statement earlier this summer.

"Bill has already given a name for the new record: Humanoid. The word 'Humanoid' comes from the science-fiction language, meaning 'humanlike,' " Jost said. "This word is pronounced differently in the English and German language but is written the same way in both languages. Bill wanted the new record to have only one name worldwide: Humanoid."


MTV News