I don’t know what their angle is, or if there is meant to be any angle at all, but Dance Party Massacre have created a site that simply asks the question:

What are you afraid of?

And you simply provide the answer. The responses so far range from funny & silly, to more thoughtful and serious comments, both kinds make for an interesting read, and you can leave your message anonymously if you so desire.

So, what are you afraid of?

* UPDATE: Alex from DPM got in touch to let me know all about the campaign, find out on their MySpace blog, it’s actually pretty damn cool, and its not just online either, they’ve been putting stickers around cities all over the US asking people what they’re afraid of.

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Tags » dance party massacre • viral

I don’t really watch many horror movies anymore, not because I’m particularly scared of the content (I’m a man who proudly boasted in his Facebook status of my opinion that Sweeney Todd ‘wasn’t that gory’), just because there aren’t that many premises out there for horror movies that really appeal to me. One of the things that I don’t like about most t-shirt designs that attempt to appeal to horror fans is the way that they seem to be covered with blood splatters and unnecessarily gruesome images, its as if the designers are trying to create an offensive image that, to me, renders it unwearable in most everyday situations. Dance Party Massacre aren’t like that, if you’ll allow me to get poetic for a second, they’re like a breath of fresh air in a haunted house filled with the stench of stale blood (ooooh, dark!).

Let’s get this out of the way at the start, the face-mask glows in the dark. So you know that I’m gonna love this tee, and especially in the context that the thing that’s often so scary about horror movies is that you can’t see the scary thing, so DPM turned that concept on its head by making sure you can always see their object of terror. This design is typical of Dance Party Massacre’s style, they try and put ambiguity and angles for interpretation into each tee and this is no different. In their own words:

There’s evil out there, and in every slasher film it’s represented as the masked psychopath. This is our version of the boogeyman coming for us. And those hands inside of it—are they dancing, or reaching out for help?

In terms of quality, Dance Part Massacre manage to put out a pretty impressive package. In my envelope (I don’t know if they sent me any special freebies) there was the tee, a DPM printed plastic carrier bag, a load of promo postcards, a pin button, and a sticker. There’s big pics of all of them at the bottom of the post. The tee itself feels good, it doesn’t have a stock tag in it but I get the feeling that it might be AA, but I’m not too used to handling Large sized AA tees (no, I haven’t dropped the pounds yet, DPM don’t to up to XL yet) so I could be wrong. The print feels quality too, and I’ll be interested to see how the glow-in-the-dark treatment lasts with multiple washings.

Costiness=$28 Link

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Tags » dance • dance party massacre • glow • glow in the dark • green • horror • massacre • movie • party • t-shirt

It feels as if I’ve been meaning to write about Dance Party Massacre since last Halloween. It would have made a lot more sense since the DPM crew seem to be pretty obsessed with making tees that are all about the horror, whilst trying not to horrify you. But, I guess that since their front page says “everyday is halloween” it doesn’t really matter when I post about this tee.This tee doesn’t really have any of the references to classic movies like most of the other tees in their fledgling range, or even the spilling of copious amounts of blood, but I just really like it for some reason. There’s just so many ways that you can take this tee, be inspired by it, laugh at it, be pseudo-intellectual with it, or look at it as referential to those propaganda posters of WW2. The slightly worn look suits this colourway, I think it might have looked a bit stark if it was just flat colour.

Costiness=$28 Link

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Tags » blue • dance party massacre • horror • t-shirt