Death By Stereo – Death Alive

Wowee! A live Death By Stereo album, this is almost as good as studio! Here’s a little known fact; I saw Death By Stereo once and ended up sleeping through a portion of their set (out of the hundreds of bands I’ve seen, they’re the only ones to hold that “honor”). I realize that a lot of people love this band, but I can’t help but find them somewhat obnoxious (if you’re a Death By Stereo fan, this is where you stop reading and proceed to send me an angry letter).

My biggest beef with Death By Stereo lies in the vocals; I simply don’t like them. The guys voice is irritating and completely turns me off the whole band, which is a shame because the other guys are fairly talented. I guess when I attempt to ignore the vocals; the songs are catchy and generally decent. Whether or not I like Death By Stereo isn’t as important as whether or not I like this CD itself though.

Death Alive seems to be a sample of the bands work from across their career, which is what one would expect from a live show. It’s got a fairly decent recording and none of the instruments are drowning the others out, so sonically, it sounds good. Unfortunately, unlike a studio album, Death Alive has banter… shitty banter. I don’t know if vocalists are obligated to make jokes and comments between songs, but this one tries to make as many as possible. I don’t know if I just have a lame sense of humor, but I really didn’t like the shit coming out of his mouth. There’s a moment in the song “Sing Along With Patriotic Punks” where the vocalist wants to find out how many people hate Catholics and tells the crowd, “When I say Catholic Priests, you say boo! Catholic Priests!” A boo ensued this comment. Most of his sentences are ridden with swears and he came across as more or less of a moron, unable to construct coherent sentences without the aid of profanity. This banter makes up a pretty solid portion of the album with a minute of two of each song dedicated to it.

If your really a Death By Stereo fan, seeing them would be infinitely better than listening to a live album (I’m assuming that if they’ll hit Edmonton on a tour, they’ll probably swing by your city at some point). At the very least, buy the DVD that they’ve supposedly released because the experience will translate a bit better. I’ve never been into live CD’s, so I can almost guarantee that this live album will not be getting any repeated plays in my stereo.