Rounding out the Die Hard franchise as a tetralogy, Bruce Willis returns this summer as the indestructible John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. And if you need a refresher on how totally badass John McClane is, the guy’s rock band Guyz Nite is here with the perfect music video (embedded below), which 20th Century Fox made them take down and then helped them put back up.

“What’s more guy than Die Hard? John McClane is the guy’s guy,” Guyz Nite front man “Guy Manley” explained in a phone interview. “This was purely a fan-based approach.” And so it was that the band sat down one rainy Sunday with some steaks and beer to watch the original Die Hard trilogy (DL Show interview embedded below). “We call ourselves official fans.”

Manley describes Guyz Nite as “The Man Show meets Spinal Tap.” A tribute to John McTiernan’s genre-defining action flick, Guyz Nite’s original “Die Hard” music video summed up the plots of the first three movies.

Originally posted in August of 2006, the media-savvy band uploaded the video right after Fox’s announcement of Die Hard 4. Riding the announcement’s coattails, the video picked up thousands of views before Fox pulled it about a week later, citing copyright infringement. The band reposted it on IFILM and eventually tried to see if they could reupload YouTube again in January of 2007.

Then in March the band was contacted by Fox through their MySpace page, this time with a different approach. “They were like, ‘We think this is great! We’re a bunch of dated marketing execs and we want to work with you to add on to the song and promote the fourth movie,’” Manley paraphrased. Manley also stressed how Fox was very hands-off in the creative process. “They told us, ‘Do your thing. We don’t want to tell you what to do. You know what you’re doing.’”

So the band went back and wrote a fourth verse for the upcoming sequel and reedited the video. “They gave us a synopsis of the fourth movie,” said Manley. They gave us advanced footage from the trailers. Before this stuff went out to anybody else we go the footage.” So with non-disclosure agreements and undisclosed compensation, the video, with new fourth verse, was back up in April.

The song has really taken off overseas. The band has been working with Fox International to promote the video. “They have sent it out to a number of prominent Latin American bloggers. It’s gotten some radio play in Europe and Asia. We actually had an interview with a Dutch radio station last week,” Manley said. He also hinted that the video might be appearing elsewhere in association with Live Free or Die Hard. And all of this just from some “official fans” and YouTube.

If you want more Die Hard-related YouTube goodies make sure to also check out The Ballad of John McClane.