Death By Stereo

Op de Persistence Tour vorig jaar stond een interview gepland met de mannen van Death By Stereo. Helaas kon dat die dag niet doorgaan maar gelukkig was de band toch in staat mijn vragen via e-mail te beantwoorden.

Voor wie de band niet kent. “Death By Stereo is part punk, part hardcore, part metal, with a touch of rock’n’roll we can’t make up our minds on what genre to stick to so we do a little of all of those. As far as accomplishments we’ve played in over 25 countries around the world and we’ve released five records which we are all proud of. We don’t make very much money doing the band so we do odd jobs at home. I teach guitar and bartend when I’m home. We’ve always had day-jobs being in Death By Stereo.”

Over de Persistence Tour 2009 had de band het volgende te melden. “Well we finished the Persistence Tour already and it was a blast. We played with great bands to great audiences. Can’t complain one bit! The Persistence tour is like a travelling festival tour, the other tours we usually get to play longer and in smaller clubs.”

De tour is een onderdeel van de promotour voor het nieuwe album Death Is My Only Friend.“We are doing a few weeks in the US with Agnostic Front, hitting South America, Australia, and Japan. We will make the rounds for sure. And we’re coming back to Europe in June for festivals. We love playing Europe and we have some really good places and some other places that are just ok. Depends on the city, I would say we do better in the Netherlands rather than France.”

Helaas is de pers niet zo te spreken over het nieuwe album. Ook lijken verkoopcijfers achter te blijven bij andere albums van Death By Stereo. Vanwege het e-mailcontact was het moeilijk om door te vragen over het moeizame opnameproces en waarom het album zo anders is dan voorheen. “It took so long mainly because we did it on our own. We didn’t have any label backing and we had to call in all our favours from our friends to make it happen. When we got to Serjical Strike/I Scream the record was already done completely. Line-up changes are a pain but Efrem and I tend to stick together through everything.”

“We like writing different sounding records every time we write. We have a ton of different influences and we write all kinds of different styles. Maybe we should be more picky as to what ends up on a DBS record but we like the differences in the records. They all sound different and we try to make each one unique.”

Waar de meeste wel over te spreken zijn is het artwork van het album. “The cover was done by Jason Cruz of Strung Out and we just let him have complete creative control in the cover art. The cover model is our friend Jen.” Op het album staat het persoonlijke nummer ‘Forever And A Day’, een al eerder opgenomen en uigebracht nummer dat nu in een ander jasje gestoken is. “Jason Freese our producer rearranged that for us. We really liked what he did so we went with it. It’s really different for us but we liked the new version because of that.”

De band heeft voor het nieuwe album een aantal clips opgenomen. Zijn clips nog wel relevant in een tijd waarin bijna iedereen via het internet met muziek in contact komt (en niet via Wet & Wild)? “I think anything a band does to promote themselves is still relevant. If you get two new people to listen to your band then that is relevant. People hardly actually pay for records anymore, should bands stop making records? The ‘Welcome to the Party’ video was done before we were even on Serjical Strike. Our friend Eliot Dillman did that for us for free for a project for school. We called in a lot of favours to make that video happen.”

“Thanks for the interview and see you on the road!!! Check out our new record ‘Death is My Only Friend’.”