You’ve probably heard of A Band Called Death by now. The Movie, we mean. Although to have heard of the movie is to have heard of the band. It’s kind of right there in the name.

Anyway, after being made last year A Band Called Death was one of those movies that wasn’t bankable enough to go to wide release, but apparently too good to be ignored. So it made the rounds of festivals and got great reviews from critics and audiences and is now available in popular services like Netflix (DVD only) and iTunes.

A band like Death will naturally mean a lot of different things to many different people. Get more than 2 people to talk about them and the inevitable disagreements will start as soon as you try to describe their music in even the most cursory way. Is it punk? Not really. Is it proto-punk? Yeah, we’ll go with that. Was it influential? Nope. It could have been hugely influential except that no one actually heard it in time to be influenced.

What does it mean? Well, hell if we know. As far as we’re concerned it doesn’t even have to mean anything. But if it does mean something then maybe it’ll be revealed to us when we go see it tonight at the Charles (9 pm). If you really want to divine what Death means then maybe give their record a spin and see what it says to you.

(feature image via Drafthouse Films)