Deadsy

Commencement (Sire)
by Lex Marburger

Well, it’s about time. Wayyyy back in Issue 36 (that’s 1997 for those who archive this wondrous rag), I interviewed Deadsy because their self-titled debut rocked my puny little world. We ran the story, put their name on the cover, and then… The label buried the album. Never released it. No one would tell me why (the interview is available online, if yer curious). Years pass, and I’m still spewing about “the best band you never heard ‘cuz The Man won’t let you hear it.” Then, out of nowhere, comes Commencement, the same damn album with a few new tracks. Still no bio or press to explain what happened. I guess Sire finally decided to take a chance on Cher’s son.

That’s right, Cher’s son. By Gregg Allman.

But wait, I can explain. Apparently, he (Elijah Blue) went to a boarding school in New England. There, he got in a lot of trouble and had a lot of fun. He noticed the inside-out hypocrisy of the place, the “grand, old, ivy-covered” pomposity on the surface and the chaotic, debauched student body underneath. He started to write music. Deep music. Not deep as in thoughtful, but as in low. Bass heavy. Type O Negative kinda stuff. Lotsa booming voices, distorted bass guitar, midtempo stuff. But he listened to a lotta Eno and Numan, and liked that futuristic, clean, light-to-no-reverb kinda thing. So he added drums as crisp as a New England fall, the weather that signals the end of fun, the start of school, the bitter winds that slip though the cracks of your soul… (sorry ’bout that – whenever I start writing about high school, I slip into Goth-poetry stylings). And, uh… old keyboards with razor-sharp tones, soaring high over the fuzzed-out bass. Blue got together with a coupla other guys and formed Deadsy. Great, evocative stuff. Futuristic Goth, instead of that medieval, pipes in the woods & tribal drums stuff. Sorta. Morbid Angel meets Eno. In Tron-land. Fantastic.

But then, times changed, and the material, though still amazing, doesn’t really stand much of a chance against the rap-metal thing. Commencement is surprisingly gentle for all its morbidity and distortion. They don’t matter as much anymore. Which is a shame. They should. And bad things loom on the horizon. Commencement has additional tracks, and although I don’t know when they were recorded (that pesky “no bio” thing), I know they weren’t done at the original sessions. Most obvious are the drums. Instead of the tight, live, creative tom & cymbal work of the original tracks, the new songs sound like a Roland 808 was used. In a non-rap style. Which sucks. And the actual construction of the tunes has changed from a simple, minimalistic swoon to a cluttered, Tom-Petty-“Don’t Come Around Here No More”-meets-David-Bowie-“The Supermen”-kind-of-feel. Which, if you care, is not a good sound. Even their T.Rex cover fails. The new songs are substandard in a glaringly obvious way when held up next to the old.

So buy Commencement for the old songs and shake your fist at Sire for letting a good band languish and subsequently produce crap. Oh well, if all else fails, he can still play bass for his mom.