Death By Stereo's new release gets another great review!
Lying on my bed, face up staring at the ceiling and listening to Death by Stereo, I have come to two conclusions. First, this is the sort of CD that spawns discussions of what the differences between hardcore and metal are. It moves at a pace that I've always associated with hardcore (and I've always thought of Death by Stereo as a hardcore band) but it contains some very metal guitar riffs. Now, if you find yourself having this conversation, I'd say you need to relax and take your music a little less seriously but I know this CD is going to spawn discussion. Which leads me to my second conclusion, anything this good deserves to spawn discussion.
Ah, hardcore. Screaming, straight forward punk racing at break neck speed towards... I don't know. I like not knowing. The downside of this, of course, is that most of the music is in the same key signature and the songs all have the same structure so one could easily say that all the songs sound the same. This is not true. So not true.
Death by Stereo's new CD Death for Life that will be out June 7th starts out with chanting "Death for Life" before giving us all what we expect, the break neck race into oblivion. But, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the beautiful track 5, Forever and a Day. If the sentiment expressed in the song weren't enough, they give you Dan Palmer and Tito's amazing guitar work. This is fully conscious rock, controlled chaos swirling to almost a whisper at the end.
What I love about this CD is that it is unrelenting, pull-it-together-and-move-the-hell-on rock. It thrashes and its dark, but its also tight and focused like in Nosotros Controlamos Todo where Efrem Schultz's amazing voice crawls around sounding like a deeper and (this is possible) more sinister Vincent Price. Or in Forget Regret, which pretty much sums up what you need to know in order to pull things together, "I know, I know, I know I must forget regret," Schultz growls.
This CD is perfect, its amazing and brutal in both in its revelations and its delivery, but I get half way through W.W.J.D.? and every time I've heard it, I've thought, "I have to see them play this live." Not, "I bet its better live," because the recording is crisp and the emotion is neither forced nor contrived. I just bet it rages live. They are currently touring and the dates can be found on Epitaph's website. Their new CD is amazing. Yes.
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