Dead by Sunrise – Out of Ashes
This album was a surprise. Usually, I’m not a big fan of “popular by association” side projects. I’m not saying I’m a big fan of this album, fronted by Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, but this album isn’t bad. In fact, it’s somewhat good.
The single from the album, “Crawl Back In”, makes you think this album is going to be Chester’s “scream-singing” band. Chester is popular for his wide vocal range and adaptation to different styles of music (as Linkin Park’s style has been slightly changing over the past years). Many people who are fans of Bennington have harped that they would love to see what this guy would be like in a proper rock band. Well, I might have to say that Dead by Sunrise seems to have a lot more for Bennington. The style of music, primarily fast paced rock, shows glimpses of musical variety enough to make the album not focused on Bennington’s screaming.
The album itself, although consistent in style, becomes worn since the music itself isn’t anything new. The single sounds like something from that album U2 did with that song “Vertigo”. A good half of the album is this ballad rock thing, reminiscent of a hybrid version of slow 90s ballad rock and slow Linkin Park songs. The other half is this grunge-y sounding rock that kind of makes you feel dirty after listening to it. Maybe in a good way. But mostly in a “is this new Linkin Park? Hmm…” way.
People who would like this album: people who want to hear Chester Bennington in a real band. Let’s face it, Linkin Park is as much of a real band as The Monkees were. Sure, The Monkees learned their instruments and made headquarters… but wait a ricky-tick. Didn’t Linkin Park say that they were going to make the music they feel like they want to make now? Does that mean they weren’t making the music they all wanted to make before? Leading to the idea that this entire six piece band who got big out of no where in the 90s is really just a big production band from Mike Shinoda? Yeah. It kind of sounds familiar… Other people who might be into this are people into fingereleven and other dance-grunge/nasty-rock bands.
Although my love/hate relationship with this album is ongoing, I think because I don’t completely hate this album makes this album worthy of the good album shoop. Due to it’s familiar ring each song, I can’t really say this music is “new” and “breakthrough” so this album won’t be getting a nomination for me. Sorry boys.
