Drafthouse Films - A Band Called Death (2012)

A documentary on the 1970s punk trio Death, and their new-found popularity decades after they disbanded. Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death. In the early '70s, inspired by Alice Cooper and The Who, three teenage brothers David, Dannis and Bobby Hackney from Detroit played punk music in their spare bedroom back when the idea of punk music barely existed. Predating the punk, Hackneys began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hope of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. The black community in Detroit looked at them with pity - didn't they know that rock was white music? Generally speaking, musicians within the black community were more in tune with the sounds of Motown. When the brother's dad died, David, the creative and spiritual brain behind the outfit, rechristened the band Death. This turned out to be a fatal mistake in marketing terms, as not a single record company would touch a band with that name. They found Death's music - and band name - too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album. But the brothers were undaunted, and stuck it out for the day their music would be appreciated. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made it way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossibly ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band, and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

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