this punk rock opera/visual album is a gripping horror short about white supremacy in the scene

It’s a scenario that anyone who isn’t a straight white dude has experienced on tour: when you walk into a venue, size up the room and realize “shit, I might not be safe here.” (The Johnson City man’s voice asking me “so is y’all some kinda f*****?” before the show will be forever etched in my eardrums.) So what do you do? Home’s 600 miles away and your ability to get there is dependent on the 50 bucks the bar’s promised to shell out at the end of the night. So you unload and play the set and try to squash down that 6th sense. Danny Denial takes that moment of dread and ratchets it up to the millionth degree on the visuals for his new album Dead Like Me.

The band pulls up to a small town bar and starts to unload at the beginning of DETHHEADS U.S.A. Things go from “shitty bar show” to “set-up for a great episode of the X-Files” quickly as the all-white bar patrons quickly reveal themselves to be members of some kind of white supremacist patriarchal death cult. To say much more would be to spoil what may be the single most harrowing video since Nine Inch Nails’ Broken movie. The video paints in broad strokes, leaving most of the horror to the imagination, while Danny Denial’s angular punk rock keeps the tension high. Songs like “Suck My Jesus” and “Dead Like Me” are the highlights of both album and film, perfectly capturing the disaffected rage and confusion.

DETHHEADS U.S.A. marks the arrival of Danny Denial as the kind of artist who makes waves. It’s a bold, honest, and chilling film that’s not just a damn good showcase for his music, but a gripping horror short on its own. Definitely check out DETHHEADS U.S.A. and the full album Dead Like Me. Both are out now.

Dead Like Me by Danny Denial

Photos by Leo Ramos and Brendan Cescon