In its darkest form, post-punk is an atrocity exhibition, drawing on horrors both real and imagined to hold up a mirror to humankind’s worst tendencies. On their debut album, Inked in Red, the Athens, Georgia, ultra-goth outfit Vision Video honor this tradition by closing with a cover of “Agent Orange,” a grim, Vietnam War-inspired song released in 1980 by the brooding Brixton dub-punk outfit Ski Patrol. Vision Video’s take is largely reverential, right down to the near-identical running times, but with one crucial difference. Ski Patrol singer Ian Lowery sings about being burned alive on the battlefield with an icy detachment that gradually thaws into hot-blooded panic, but Vision Video frontman Dusty Gannon sounds unsettled from the jump. In fact, for Gannon, singing from the perspective of a besieged soldier isn’t mere cosplay.
Long before he formed Vision Video in 2017, Gannon was a disaffected teen who joined the army to escape a life of menial labor; he eventually found himself leading a rifle platoon in the streets of Kandahar during America’s never-ending war with Afghanistan. Disheartened by his experience as a cog in the war machine, he quit the military upon his return home. Yet in his current day jobs—as a firefighter and a paramedic treating COVID-19 patients—he’s still surrounded by people suffering through the worst, if not the last, days of their lives.
Given Gannon’s background, it’s not surprising that his lyrics are filled with images of blood, death, and burning skies. What is unexpected, however, is that those dark thoughts have yielded a record full of such vim and vigor. Vision Video essentially have one kind of song, but it’s a good, highly durable one—i.e., the sort of taut, energetic, yet oddly dreamy tune that’s tailor-made for the sort of wallflower who sprints to the dancefloor the instant the DJ drops “Age of Consent” or “Primary” at Goth Night. But in Gannon, Vision Video are blessed with a singer whose voice soars instead of sulks. And when he blends his with that of keyboardist Emily Fredock, the group exhibits a radiance that distinguishes them from fellow black-lipstick aficionados.
Even as Gannon sings of heartbreak in gory, slasher-flick terms on “In My Side” (“My body’s bare in this murder scene/And it’s always there reminding me /That I feel your knife in my back”), there’s a triumphant quality to the chorus that reflects his ability to withstand the pain. He confronts his post-war PTSD in discomfiting detail on Inked in Red’s stirring title track and the haunting “Kandahar,” but the group’s sing-along hooks and soothing “Love Will Tear Us Apart” synth lines amplify the songs’ emotional resonance. Unlike more mannered peers, Vision Video leave little doubt that their unspeakable imagery is the product of lived experience rather than horror-flick fiction. “Each way I turn I’m searching for a guiding light/But there just don’t seem to be any signs of life,” Gannon sings on “Inked in Red,” suggesting he’ll never outrun the shadows of his past. But the bravado in his delivery indicates he’s going to keep trying. As a frontline worker, Gannon has devoted his post-Afghanistan life to helping other people; with Vision Video, he gets to help himself.
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