Listening to the Haunted Hours LP by Vision Video transported me to the same place I visited when discovering The Smiths for the first time. In this new album, the Gothic pop post-punk band from Athens, GA has distinguished their sound more than ever.
Haunted Hours opens with “Beautiful Day to Die”, which brings feelings larger than life to the forefront – “My heart explodes every single time I hear your words … I’ll be gone tomorrow”. You can feel the hurt contained in this cathartic track. Discussing “Beautiful Day To Die”, songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Dusty Gannon noted, “I wrote ‘Beautiful Day to Die’ about my experiences as a paramedic and firefighter seeing a lot of death first hand, and how you become well acquainted with it in a very surreal, yet comfortable way. It’s about how I had to become friends with the concept of mortality because I was around it so regularly.”
“Cruelty Commodity” dives and takes the listener deeper down this cruel emotional spiral. In the title track “Haunted Hours”, you can hear the passion in the vocals singing about dark nights faced and love’s violence.
The songwriting especially shines in “Promises”, an overtly political statement from Gannon, who served one tour of Afghanistan in the U.S. Army: “I was thinking a lot about the disconnect between the religious who often preach acceptance and unconditional love, and how there was so much hatred and contempt for people protesting for things like the BLM movement,” he said. “I feel like the past several years has given rise to a very vocal and politically motivated Evangelical Christian enclave that is rising in visibility. This song is sort of a character examination of that mindset.”
Impressive instrumentation and other experimental sound elements fill the rest of the album, and “End of Days” is a fitting end for this listening journey. This is a great album to give a listen year-round, but especially gearing up for Halloween.
Find this and more exciting new music on our Alchemical Multigenre Mixdown playlist on Spotify.
Emma Page, a recent Journalism graduate of The George Washington University, possesses a passion for music journalism and storytelling in all its forms. Originally from Baltimore, MD, when she is not writing, she can be found at a local concert or making music of her own.
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