Big pharma’s number one
The middle kingdom
They’ll OD everyone
Where has the narcan gone
Detroit’s VAZUM, the brainchild of Zach Pliska and Emily Sturm, doesn’t tread lightly; they carve through the noise with relentless force. From the heart of their Light Echo Studio, they have sculpted a body of work that refuses restraint, a collision of raw energy and spectral beauty. Their self-dubbed “deathgaze” sound, ferocious yet hypnotic, floods the senses, drenched in distortion and propelled by unrelenting rhythms. They uphold a steadfast refusal to conform; a strike against the mundane.
Western Violence is the title track from VAZUM’s latest album, released last year. A venomous indictment of addiction, violence, and the hypocrisy woven into the fabric of a crumbling society, Western Violence tears through the bleak landscape of substance abuse, corporate greed, and vigilante justice, painting a world where overdose is a commodity, Big Pharma fuels destruction, and self-appointed enforcers stalk the streets, armed and emboldened. Anger boils beneath every line: rage at a system that turns lives into statistics, fury at those who revel in their own cruelty. The song is a lacerating scream against a culture built on death, where no one dies alone, yet no one is truly free. Truly a dark anthem for our unsettling times.
The band took to the streets of Jackson, Mississippi, to conjure a vision of decay, desperation, and the grim specters that lurk in plain sight. A skeletal figure drifts through a graveyard, weaving between crumbling tombstones, while flashes of a harsher, more immediate reality flicker in its wake. Pill bottles spill into trembling hands; a cold barrel catches the light; hooded figures slink through alleys where menace lingers like smoke. These aren’t just images; they are warnings, echoes of a world unraveling, stitched together with stark finality. The video, raw and unflinching, serves as both requiem and reckoning, a mirror held up to the forgotten corners of America.
With their UK tour looming, VAZUM releases this visual omen as a prelude, a forewarning, a dare. The road ahead is long, the night unrelenting, and the music, like the ghosts that haunt these streets, refuses to rest.
Watch the video for “Western Violence” below:
Listen to Western Violence below, and order the album here.
Catch VAZUM on tour in the UK:
February 27th Manchester
February 28th Nottingham
March 1st Leeds
March 2nd Gateshead
March 5th Glasgow
March 6th Edinburgh
March 8th Morecambe
The post Detriot Duo Vazum Debut Their Macabre Video for “Western Violence” Ahead of UK Tour appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
