Musician and actor Kurt Deimer has never been interested in staying inside one lane. On his new single “Scared To Death,” the rising rock vocalist leans fully into the overlap between his music and film worlds, delivering a haunted-house rocker that doubles as the title track for his upcoming horror-comedy film Scared To Death, due in theaters March 13.
The song arrives alongside the announcement of Deimer’s sophomore album, A Grog Is Born, out May 8 via his own Bald Man Records. Together, the single, album, and film form a kind of interconnected trilogy—one that centers around Deimer’s alter ego, The Grog, and treats rock music less like a standalone format than a cinematic universe.
“Scared To Death” balances crunching guitars with Deimer’s unmistakable baritone, a voice critics have described as “sinister and electrifying” and “one of the most unusual voices to grace the hard rock medium.” The accompanying video, directed by Paul Boyd (Neon Trees, Shania Twain), was shot inside the same house used for the film and leans hard into genre spectacle, transforming Deimer and his bandmates into undead figures stalking the corridors. Boyd, who also wrote and directed the movie, called Deimer “a future horror icon,” a title the singer seems increasingly comfortable inhabiting.
A Grog Is Born expands on that persona while also marking a creative rebirth. Produced by five-time GRAMMY winner Chris Lord-Alge, the 12-track album stretches Deimer’s sound well beyond brute-force hard rock. There’s the radio-ready punch of “In Deep,” featuring Josh Todd, which cracked the Mediabase Active Rock chart, alongside atmospheric turns like “True,” the medieval-tinged “800 AD,” and a heavy reinterpretation of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight.”
The album also features a guest appearance from Geoff Tate on a reimagined version of “Silent Lucidity,” underscoring Deimer’s willingness to engage with classic rock history while reshaping it in his own image. Throughout the record, his vocals move fluidly between spoken-word menace and full melodic power, reflecting the confidence of an artist who’s found his voice later than most—and isn’t interested in playing catch-up.
That sense of reinvention mirrors Deimer’s broader story. After stepping away from music for years, he reemerged in the late 2010s not just as a rocker, but as an actor and producer, appearing in Halloween (2018) and launching his own horror franchise, Hellbilly Hollow. With Scared To Death and A Grog Is Born, those parallel paths finally converge.
Rather than treating music and film as separate pursuits, Deimer is fusing them into a single identity—one where albums feel cinematic, movies feel musical, and the line between character and creator stays deliberately blurred. For an artist built on reinvention, it’s less a gimmick than a mission statement.
