There’s a particular madness that grips the Catskills come autumn, when the woods crackle with burnt leaves and stray spirits, and the moon leans in close, hungry for a story. Dmitry Wild answers that lunacy with Alive, a delirious rock-and-roll séance that swaps out the sermon for a snarling grin and a raunchy guitar lick. It’s part B-movie fever dream, part jukebox exorcism, a slice of pure pulp that howls with joy at its own absurdity.
Filmed in Woodstock and Hudson, New York, by Strangehouse Media and Jenniffer Claroscura, the video opens like a drive-in reel from another dimension. A pack of leather-clad riders (Gary Hews, Alan Coxon, and Wild himself) roar through those ancient hills as if pursued by the ghost of Link Wray. The rhythm bites; the bass growls like something half-feral. Then comes the twist: our rebel frontman catches the devil’s groove and grows a snout under the strobe. Rockabilly gives way to lycanthropy.
The transformation scene plays like a Pee-wee’s Playhouse nightmare directed by Russ Meyer. There’s glorious camp, but also a strange sweetness; the sense of a man devoured by his own muse. Wild waltzes with the chaos. His eyes gleam with the same delirious devotion that drove Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to crawl out of coffins and set microphones on fire. The guitars shriek, the drums stomp like iron hooves, and the editing, cut to ribbons by Strangehouse Media, keeps the whole spectacle twitching with electric mischief.
The video moves like an invocation of forgotten jukebox spirits, the ones who never made it past the B-side. It’s a love letter to 1950s drive-ins, to grindhouse monsters, to the small-town bands who believed a three-chord song could raise the dead. Wild channels that lineage without nostalgia – more invocation than imitation, the same party soundtrack provided by bands like Screamin’ Rebel Angels and The Gun Club.
By the time the credits roll, you half expect smoke to curl from your screen. The werewolf dances off into the woods, leaving behind nothing but laughter and feedback. Alive is what happens when the moonlight hits the jukebox just right, and the music decides to bite back.
Watch below:
The fun doesn’t stop there! Dmitry Wild is haunting the Bowery Electric in NYC with a Halloween show on 29 October: Dmitry Wild and the New Yorkers will play songs by the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Tickets are available here. Awwwoooooo!!
Listen to Alive below (out now on Cacophone Records) and order Vintage Tales here.
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