Allgigs.co.uk
This is Linkin Park's Chester Bennington's side-project, born out of not having a home for certain songs composed during the 'Midnight To Midnight' sessions. According to Bennington, these tracks didn't fit in with Linkin Park's direction back in 2005, and so Dead By Sunrise was born. The music is supposed to be darker than his main bands' - hmmmm, I disagree, give or take a couple of examples on this 12-track effort.
The opener is pretty much what you might expect from 'track 1 on a rock album', spunky, punky and obviously a crowd-pleaser. "Fire! Is a decent enough neck-nodder and I already prefer this to most Park stuff. But the formula continues on the next couple of songs and I start to yawn and fidget - until "Inside Of Me" strikes up, that is. A ballsy little snail-raiser, it's over too quickly and the solo work of guitarist Amir Derakh gives the whole piece a real lift as it rumbles to an end. However, at this point, the album takes a turn for the worst........
The mid-section borders on 'The Blandest Rock Ballads In The World Ever' and I had to check whether I was listening to Snow Jovi or Dave Matthews Leppard. Inoffensive and a bit, um, prissy, "Let Down" and "Give Me Your Name" are definitely not dark and definitely not much more than pleasant love-rock songs. "My Suffering" does little to wake me from my slumber either, despite sounding like an angry gob of bilious vitriol and "Condemned" fails to vault over its own sorry example of lyricism - "Love me like a suicide"...oh please. It continues on the ballad "Into You" - "..and I fall into you and I fade away"....yeesh.
Musically, this is a decent, melodic album (the first 4 might warrant an EP release), but there won't be any Ivor Novello awards for songwriting being dished out for this batch of songs, whose lyrics have been composed by chucking a packet of magnetic words onto a fridge door at best. Go back to the Park, Chester.
