PopHorror Let's Get Scared
A few days ago, we were hit up by a man named David Black who informed us that, at this very moment, he is putting the finishing touches on his ninth (!!!) music video for his band, Darkness Visible. From what it sounds like, the video for the song “Breaking Point” is going to be the band’s most extreme and untasteful video they’ve ever done, featuring everything from carnie workers to burlesque dancers to BDSM outfits to many, MANY severed dicks. Of course, we at PopHorror were instantly intrigued. Just on that description alone, it would’ve been a damn shame to not investigate the background of this video, the band, and the man behind it all: David Black.
Born in Melbourne, Australia, David Black has lived a life drenched in the blood and sweat of the Melbourne Indie Punk scene. Going to concerts and venues since he was thirteen years old, Black eventually started his own band, Death Penalty (later re-named Thrush), before embarking on a career in the punk comic world.
His first comic, Punkz, only ran for one month, but it was enough to land Black with a solid career in advertising, and his detailed, zany drawings would soon be featured weekly in band and bar adverts across Melbourne. These included a poster for Ska TV’s 20th Anniversary and an early poster for 3PBSfm.
Eventually, after working for several years as an editorial cartoonist for the tabloid The Truth, Black found himself burned out and with a desire to return to music, forming the band Darkness Visible in 1994. Their music sounds like if Nosferatu made a goth-punk-grunge band. Not Lestat, with his preening 20-something emo conglomerates, but old-school Nosferatu – we’re talking the low crooning, the leather, the burlesque dancers, a real ’80s sensibility. Oh yeah, there’s also occasionally chicks sharpening metal bits attached to their damn bodies, so that’s pretty amazing too.
The band has since been documented by journalist Mick Mercer and has had a steady stream of releases, leading us to the present day with “Breaking Point.” But what makes this newest video extra special?
In the official press release, the video is being described as “Benny Hill meets Troma…” AKA alternative culture meets fast-paced frenzy. Says Black, “After eight music videos, I decided that now was the time to pull out all the stops. This time it was no holds barred and take no prisoners! It’s a medical fetish Ozploitation video that has clowns with chainsaws, jelly wrestling in vomit, giant syringes being shoved up bums, dwarves with dildos, boobs, gimps and streaming pus! What more could a person want in a music video?”
The answer, obviously, is nothing.
As the press release states, the video is in post-production, so we should be seeing a release in just a couple of weeks… we here at PopHorror will certainly keep you posted on when “Breaking Point” drops! If the bands prediction is correct, you’ll have to be quick to see it, but from the sounds of it, it should be a gory good time!
