Darkness calls
He’s the lead singer of an industrial rock band, author and creator of a horror comic book series – meet the Dark Prince of Oz Horror, Jesse Dracman
By JESSE DRACMAN
As the singer for industrial rockers, Darkcell, I’ve indulged my dark persona, writing horror-inspired songs and anthems and performing them for enthusiastic audiences across Australia, the USA, UK and Germany. For more than 10 years, Darkcell’s energy and dynamic live shows have created opportunities to tour with many of our favourite bands, including Motionless in White, Combichrist, Rob Zombie, Wednesday 13, and many more that we’d never even imagined collaborating with, let alone forming great friendships.
But the pandemic (what I call “The Madness”) brought everything to a crashing halt. We had a national tour, international tour support, then a follow-up US tour mapped out. But then poof – all gone. That was a sadly similar tale for many of our friends and peers whose livelihoods were dramatically affected. We were all forced to adapt while the music industry went into a deep coma. But I was lucky – I could see a light shining in the darkness.
Living the dream
Writing had always been a passion of mine and, as an avid reader, I had many so many ideas waiting to surface. Back in 2015, my band had toured the USA for six weeks, playing 22 shows across the American midwest. We lived the rock’n’roll dream as a band of brothers on the road, living in an RV, seeing the world and playing our music. I kept daily journals of the experience, and had planned to release them as a novel, but then inspiration struck. I decided to adapt part of the journals and create a novella called ‘Freakenstein’.
The concept? A world taken over by a supernatural force and infested with werewolves, vampires, zombies and the creatures of the night. Throw in a band which has been brutally slain and then resurrected, led by a rock’n’roll anti-hero, Freakenstein. But I didn’t stop there. Over 12 months, I wrote two more novellas based on one of my favourite movies, The Warriors.
My idea was set 40 years after the events in the movie and created a violent and somewhat nightmarish legacy tale for a new generation. A Furious Tale and Furies Revenge follow a bloodied path based on a gang from the movie, The Baseball Furies. I have a third and final chapter to the series near complete, as well as numerous other writing projects.
Freek Productions is alive!
The creative drive to bring great ideas to life fuels me and gives me inspiration. Much like my character Frankenstein, I scream “IT’S ALIVE!!!” at almost every opportunity. I’ve also started my own production company called Freek Productions which is a hub for all of my creative ventures. Why Freek? When I looked it up, Freek actually means, ‘Too weird to be a freak’. Perfect! In the last year, I’ve also produced my own podcast series called Happy Daze, and some short music videos. But even with all these projects, something else was clawing to get out.
Worldwide fans
As a proud comic book nerd and horror enthusiast, it was logical that I should adapt my Freakenstein novella into a comic book series – I’d fallen in love with the characters and was excited by the possibilities of creating their world through illustrations. Freakenstein is a six-part, black and white limited series written by me and illustrated by Indonesian artists, Pristianyuli and Deanandut.
Already there’s a bit of love out there for this rock horror series which is filled to the brim with action and insane amounts of gore. Fans of the series include Emmy Award-winning SFX guru Chad Atkinson, comic artist Wayne Nichols (Marvel Comics, Dark Horse), drummer David Abbruzzese (ex Pearl Jam- Vs/Vitalogy albums), singer Johnathan Devoy (From Love to Violence, actor Queen of the Damned), who also stars in the series. Comic book cameos include Wednesday 13 and Jack Tankersley, Ahrue and Diego (ex-Ill Nino/ Lions at the Gate), Matt Alston (Machine Head). The battles also feature guest commentators appearing in the series direct from their Space Zebra podcast, Josh Balz (ex Motionless in White), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit) and Bobby Schubenski (co-owner of Blackcraft). Legit! Stay tuned for more gore, as well as my new horror comic, Game of Two Evils and my very first Manga comic, D.A.M.I.E.N.
Freakenstein is available from Freek Productions (freekproductions.com), as well as Horror Hub Marketplace and in-store at Comics Etc (Brisbane). Darkcell is on social media as well as YouTube and Spotify.