Blacklite District have made a name for themselves over the past few years thanks not just to their music, but also their videos. The duo of Kyle Pfeiffer and Roman James, based out of Spearfish, S.D., first notched a charting single with “With Me Now,” a No. 34-peaking song on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Songs airplay chart in 2013, but it began to gain steam thanks to a series of clips on YouTube with its music set to footage from the popular video game Minecraft.
Lo and behold, Blacklite District have accumulated more than 100 million views on videos set to their songs since then, including a clip featuring “Cold as Ice,” its second Mainstream Rock Songs appearance from earlier this year (No. 35, January 2018). However, for the band’s next act, they’re shedding the 3-D theatrics in favor of a live-action video for “Hard Pill to Swallow,” which Billboard is premiering below.
The video for “Swallow,” the lead single from Blacklite District’s upcoming studio album Through the Ages, finds Pfeiffer and James performing the track outside the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center in Anaheim, Calif.
“We worked with DZFX Media in Southern California on the video,” Pfeiffer tells Billboard. “I literally ran into him at Guitar Center while I was picking up something for our studio sessions for the new album. We started talking right there at the counter and ended up shooting three videos that week, with ‘Hard Pill to Swallow’ being the first.”
In a previously posted trailer for the video, the band called the song the ushering in of a “new era” for Blacklite District. Pfeiffer says that’s not just a fancy way of saying they have a new song and video — it’s also showcasing the group’s next steps as musicians.
“To an act like Blacklite District, it means evolving the sound and look, growing the brand and awareness, and speaking the truth in the art whether people like what we have to say or not,” he says. “I will always stay 100 percent true to who I am as an artist.”
As for future plans, an additional video for “Swallow” created with Rainimator, who’s helmed some of the band’s successful Minecraft-?featuring clips, is scheduled for release in the coming weeks, and Through the Ages, its fourth album and third released via AK Entertainment, is planned to drop before the end of 2018.