Quad Cities arts collective Void Church has a taste for the goth, synthy and underground side of music. It’s no surprise, then, that they’re big fans of Italian horror films, specifically the influential works of director Lucio Fulci and composer Fabio Frizzi.
The two maestros paid a visit to the Q.C. in the before times of 2019, where Devin Alexander of the local band Giallows — a co-organizer of Void Church — met Frizzi for the first time. The two stayed in touch, and when Frizzi went back on tour with a live soundtrack for the iconic 1979 Fulci joint Zombie (titled Zombi 2 in Italy), Alexander knew he had to book a stop.
Little Village spoke with Alexander ahead of the Thursday, May 8 performance by Frizzi and his band at the Capitol Theatre in Davenport — a show Alexander sees as a perfect representation of Void Church’s mission.
Why are you excited to present Fabio Frizzi?
I first got deeply into Italian horror back in 2015 or so, but had seen Italian horror films since the late ’90s. What most Italian horror films have in common is amazing music. Regardless of the decade, the plots, quality of acting or budgets, they absolutely did not skimp on the music, and I noticed that the same name kept coming up: Fabio Frizzi.
Fabio Frizzi worked with director Lucio Fulci a lot, and Fulci’s films are some of the wildest Italian horror you can find. He utilized Fabio Frizzi almost exclusively for what seems like a decade or so beginning in the mid-’70s, and that collaboration proved to be an absolute winner for both the director and composer, resulting in films whose incredible visuals were matched by incredible music, and that pushed those films above and beyond the majority of the other Italian horror at the time.
Fabio was on tour in 2019 performing a live score for Fulci’s number-one hit The Beyond, and Bob Herington of Ragged Records and Jason Parris of Wake Brewing, then booking for Rock Island Brewing Company, were courageous enough to book a date for them, where I was fortunate enough to actually meet Fabio Frizzi and his band, and the amazing Cadabra Records, who organized that tour, and it’s a connection I maintained ever since.
In 2024, Frizzi and his band were on tour for Fulci’s Zombie. When he announced a second leg in 2025 due to their 2024 success, I messaged Fabio and got his booking agent’s info, and Jason Gililland from The Capitol Theatre in Davenport was interested in trying something new for the theater, so I connected them.
Italian cinema is also enjoying a small resurgence in Davenport due to The Last Picture House celebrating Italian collaborations in their pre-film intro reel that plays before all their movie showings. The Last Picture House is also assisting with promotion of the Frizzi event, as well as showing The Beyond on the rooftop the Tuesday before the show!
How does his music fit with the VOID CHURCH “brand”/sound?
Void Church was first and foremost a purveyor of Italian horror-influenced sounds, due to its creation by Adam Wesconsin and myself as a way for our band Giallows (a purposeful misspelling of the Italian film genre giallo) to reach other likeminded groups in the Midwest.
Our love of Italian horror soundtracks and ’90s alt-rock was the initial driving force. We celebrate soundtracks as much as we celebrate rock music genres, and it was only natural to fold in our love of alt-rock, shoegaze, industrial and especially goth music, after we created Void Church.
The Fabio Frizzi event is actually the closest to what we’ve been aiming to do since the inception of Void Church, but it’s only now that the real opportunity has presented itself so generously. We have put on shows of many genres and always with an emphasis on darkness and the strange and unusual, and this is the pinnacle of our dream-gigs so far. Horror, film, soundtracks and live performance all in one perfect show.
How did you feel when Frizzi agreed to participate?
Fabio Frizzi was a generous and amazing person to meet from literally the first moment we shook hands, and he even took a photo for his Instagram wearing our band T-shirt months after he returned home to Italy after the 2019 tour. His music is an inspiration in both Giallows’ and Void Church’s vibe-checks for years.
Our hope is that this collaboration with Jason at the Capitol Theatre paves the way for future horror-related events such as film screenings, an appearance by Joe Bob Briggs from The Last Drive-In, and in a perfect world, John Carpenter if his band goes on the road again!
Emma McClatchey contributed to this article.
