Dead Meadow Pay Homage to Horror Films in Concert DVD

The guys in psychedelic rock band Dead Meadow all share a love for Hammer films, 1960s horror movies and Vincent Price flicks, and with the March 23 of 'Three Kings' on Xemu Records, they get to pay a bit of homage to them. 'Kings' is a live record of the band's back catalog and a few new studio songs, and it's accompanied by a DVD of concert footage combined with short vignettes that follow a storyline throughout.

In the vignettes, bassist Steve Kile, guitarist Jason Simon and drummer Stephen McCarty play three men loosely based on the biblical idea of wandering nomads. "Through their different faults and issues they all meet at the same place and they're being judged by the darker side of things," Kile tells Spinner. "You can almost look at it as this moral sort of tale, but really it was just a way to create some trippy scenes with a live performance."

The live footage comes from Dead Meadow's May 30, 2008, concert, recorded by the filmmakers of Artificial Army, who Kile says shard the band's vision for the film. "It's really hard to find people to play in a band with, let alone to find people to be like, 'Can you take all these crazy, sometimes stupid ideas we have and make them into a visual?'" he says. "But when we met the Artificial Army guys, it ended up really working out."

Living in Los Angeles gave the band the opportunity to utilize a couple of noteworthy filming locations, including a 900-acre plot of land on the coast of Santa Barbara and the Arthur Elrod house used in an old James Bond movie. "It's one of those places where you can push buttons and entire walls move," Kile says of the house. "There are a lot of really classic movie locations you could use, that I think a lot of major productions these days don't use because it's been done before. But being a band trying to kind of ape some of this historical feel to it? For us it's perfect."

Kile says the overall film should give new listeners and longtime fans a chance to see who the band really is more than a decade into its career. "For the time and place it was [filmed], I feel that it's a great representation of how we played the music at the time," he says. "And when you mix vignettes and other fun stuff, I hope people really get a chance to appreciate the personality and the things that go into our music."