For his upcoming album VISCERA, the “Sure Thing” singer hosted a special “Viscera Experience” event at Sony Studios in Los Angeles Friday night (Aug. 25) On stage, a bare-backed Miguel had staff members on stage pierce metal hooks through his back and attach him to wires hanging down from the ceiling. Miguel is seen taking a few steps forward and it’s revealed that the hooks are in fact pulling on his bare skin. After hovering for about 4 minutes, the machine lowered Miguel to the stage, where his assistants removed the hooks from his back.
Hundreds of press outlets hailed the performance as an innovative, “boundary-pushing” show seemingly unaware that lead vocalist Matt Zane of Society 1 has been suspending and performing complete sets in front of thousands of people while suspending for 20 years.
“I was awakened at about 7am when the news broke. My phone just blew up. I went on-line to see every publication in existence was hailing this as if it were the most groundbreaking, crazy original thing in music history. I walked around all day wondering if their crew knew what I had done or if they just decided to ignore it. I mean in the last year my suspension videos received over 4 million views on TikTok. How could they not know?” said Zane
This proved frustrating for Zane and drummer Dagon because they were planning a suspension finale for their movie (ShockRockMovie.com) currently in production. Zane continues, “The end of the movie is in question now. Miguel is a huge star with millions of followers. Getting any coverage is going to be difficult if we go with the original plan. The press and the people would associate it with him since he didn’t give me credit as the first singer to do this and do it on such an extreme level beyond him.”
Zane was the first singer to perform suspended and broke the world record for longest body suspension in 2008 beating previous record holder Criss Angel.