Mystery Skulls

History

The project was formed in 2011 by Luis Dubuc after his previous project, The Secret Handshake, was dissolved. Dubuc initially announced the project on August 8, 2011 via the Mystery Skulls official Tumblr account, where he posted a video of the song Amazing. He later followed this post with a five song EP on December 30, 2011. Since then, Mystery Skulls has performed in cities across the country, signed with Warner Bros. Records, and has collaborated with noteworthy artists such as Brandy Norwood and Nile Rodgers. Dubuc continues to perform shows across the country.

Chart history

Videos

The Mystery Skulls have had three official music videos so far. "Ghost" which is a parody of The Exorcist; "Paralyzed" which is shown as a Japanese video game featuring mystic monks playing basketball at night; and finally "Magic" which is completely CGI animated and presents an alternate telling of how the galaxy came into existence. The only official video to have at least a million views on YouTube is "Paralyzed".

Several videos have been created for Mystery Skulls' songs by their fans. In 2012, the YouTube user Ben Mangum, under the name MysteryBen27, released his first animated music video featuring music by Mystery Skulls entitled "Turntable Turnabout" which featured the Ace Attorney characters Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth, Godot, and the Judge dancing along to the song "Money". As of February 26, 2017, the video has 10.60 million views on YouTube and it has been said that Mystery Skulls loved the video so much, that they gave permission to Mangum to use their songs to make future music videos.

On October 26, 2014, Mangum and a group of friends called "the Ghost Crew" released an animated video for the song "Ghost", which featured original characters and a plot heavily modeled after the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Scooby-Doo. The video follows "Mystery Skulls", a group similar to Scooby-Doo's Mystery Inc., made up of members Vivi, Arthur, and their dog Mystery. The group find and explore a haunted mansion, but find themselves chased by a skeletal ghost; a flashback reveals that the ghost is Lewis, a former Mystery Skulls member killed by a possessed Arthur; now Lewis desires revenge and to reconnect with Vivi, whom he was in love with, but he is denied as the group escape the mansion, which fades away along with a heartbroken Lewis.

The members of "the Ghost Crew" who were mentioned in the end credits consist of Ben Mangum who is the Director and one of three Animators along with Isaiah Kim and Blake Hudson; Backgrounds/Props were done by Kressent Rhodes, James Workman, and Jourdan Lasko, and Effects were done by Patrick Rantala. "Ghost" was so popular that Mangum decided to make a series of sequel videos entitled "Mystery Skulls Animated", and that "Ghost" was the 1st video in the 6 part series. The video is still immensly popular - as of March 5, 2017, the video has 22 million views on YouTube; which far surpasses the views of the original "Ghost" music video which has less than half a million.

The sequel to "Ghost" was released on April 15, 2016 using the song "Freaking Out". Shiromori, a mysterious plant woman, hunts after a fox spirit but loses the trail until finding Lewis's locket. The plant woman chases after the fox spirit who turns out to be Mystery in disguise, while Lewis's restored spirit jacks a semi-truck to chase after Arthur and Vivi. The members of "the Ghost Crew" consist of the same group that did the "Ghost" video save for two new members; they are Melyssa Denton and Chloe (Poisonhearts). During the end credits, Ben Mangum is again listed as Director and Animator, but the other eight are simply listed by name making their contributions unspecified. Blake Hudson makes a dedication after the end credits to his papa, Tony King for believing in him. Afterwards, the song for the next video is heard playing in the background, revealing the upcoming video to be using the song "Hellbent" at a unspecified date.

Through further investigation, the contributions of "the Ghost Crew" for the video "Freaking Out" was discovered; Kressent Rhodes is credited for Lead Art and Backgrounds, Jourdan Lasko is credited for Assets and Layout Coordinator, Melyssa Denton is credited for Animation and Special Effects, Patrick Rantala is credited for Lead Special Effects, Blake Hudson and Isaiah Kim are both credited for Animation and Storyboarding, Chloe (Poisonhearts) is credited for Puppets, and finally James Workman who is credited for Backgrounds. The video has done well, as of March 5, 2017, the video has 7.6 million views on YouTube.

Another user, Marisol Aranda, under the screen name yuramec, released a homemade music video in 2015 with original characters (unrelated to Ben Mangum's work) with the song "Magic". The video follows a necromancer and his assistant; as the necromancer summons ghosts to sing, a monster is awoken and chases after him. He is overpowered by the monster, but gains the upperhand with assistance from the ghosts and uses their power to transform the monster into its original from, a ghost girl; the ghost girl is embraced by her parent's spirits as they are guided by the lights of heaven to the afterlife. The video is said to be incomplete since it is presented in a rough-draft/storyboard format and a more-completed version is presumed to be released at an unknown date, though this seems unlikely because of the users belief that Aranda was denied permission to use music by Mystery Skulls. The current video as of February 26, 2017, has amassed 4.7 million views on YouTube and so far has not been taken down.

Yet another user called Sleazeplanet has released a number of music videos featuring music by Mystery Skulls, which include hits like "Amazing", "Ghost", and "Paralyzed".