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Deadsy - Commencement
- The lead singer of Deadsy is descended from music. Elijah Blue Allman is the son of Cher and Gregg Allman, and listening to his throaty voice, one can hear hints of both of them. This is where the musical similarities end. I would say that Deadsy is part techno, part metal, part glam rock. The band claims to have created their own genre, called undercore, which is a good description. Certainly one could say that the synth heavy music is part of the '80s revival which is going on. But whereas many artists today, like Kanye West, revive the '80s in superficial stylistic terms, these guys bring it back musically. Their first album, appropriately named “Commencement,” illustrates that fact with covers of late '70s and early '80s songs like “Tom Sawyer” and “Lake Waramaug.” For the record, these covers rock, and while they do not stray very far from the originals, they discover something new lurking beneath the pretty synthesizers.
Although the sound is reminiscent of the '80s, these guys have added, or rather brought out, one thing that the '80s paid little attention to: bass. The bass here, played on a synth guitar, rumbles and bellows. It is, in a word, awesome—as in filling you with awe. It is unexpectedly loud, almost drowning out the rest of the music, but not quite. It's just enough to give the '80s sound edge and gloom. Of course, covers are not all that these guys do. When listening to their own songs, like “Mansion World,” one can hear Elijah's own songwriting style, influenced by multiple books and a large vocabulary, emerging. It is a fresh twist on an old sound.
Unfortunately, there is one pitfall in creating an '80s revival band, and that is that the sound is prone to cheesiness. It wouldn’t be so bad if that was on purpose, but it gets hard to take Deadsy as seriously as they seem to take themselves. Songs like “Le Cirque en Rose” and “Seagulls” may have you laughing too hard to follow the music. Those songs aside, this is a band with a lot of potential, evident in the new qualities they discover in old classics.
Reviewer: Josh Brachfeld
new
Reviewer's Rating: 8.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
Added: 13-Jun-2009
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