A Band Called Death (FILM REVIEW)
A Band
Called Death
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Reverential Rockumentary Amounts to a Very Good Movie about a Very Bad Band
After hearing some heavy metal in
the early Seventies, Dannis, Bobby and David Hackney decided to make a big change
in the type of music they were performing. Up until then, the African-American
siblings from Detroit
had been playing a blend of R&B and rock as the Rock Fire Funk Express.
Then, the guys came up with a new name,
Death, and a new sound perhaps best described as an atonal precursor of punk,
although the genre hadn’t yet come into existence as of yet. They signed a
record deal with a prominent local promoter (not Motown), but the album was
deep-sixed before it ever got pressed into vinyl. No surprise to this listener,
judging by the demos.
Searching for a viable alternative career
path in music, the trio eventually moved to Vermont where they did get to release a
couple of gospel albums as The 4th Movement. But when that dream of
superstardom failed to materialize, David moved back home, while Dannis and
Bobby remade themselves as a reggae group, Lambsbread, with Bobbie Duncan
replacing their brother on guitar.
Lambsbread failed to capture the
fans’ imagination, too. In 2000, chain-smoker David passed away of lung
cancer, and that might’ve been the end of the story, given that Hackneys had
barely registered a bleep on Rock & Roll’s radar.
However, Death is now belatedly
being put on the map with the help of such rock icons as Henry Rollins, Alice
Cooper, Kid Rock, Questlove along with actor Elijah Wood. Are you a big fan of
punk? Neither am I. Nor was I during my formative years when the atonal genre
came of age.
Listen, the personal anecdotes in A
Band Called Death are extremely entertaining, and often touching, especially when
Dannis and Bobby express their irrepressible fondness for their dearly departed
sibling. I suppose music is in the ear of the behearer, but as for the
suggestion that this average garage band were somehow visionaries ahead of their
time, I just don’t think so.
Very Good
(3 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 98 minutes
Distributor: Drafthouse
Films
To see a trailer for A Band Called Death, visit:
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