Album review: Dead by Sunrise's 'Out of Ashes'

The best thing about Linkin Park's last album, "Minutes to Midnight," was how deftly it cleaved off the band's rap-rock stereotypes. Chester Bennington dialed down his caterwauling, and the songs were rooted in lighters-up emo tinged with snappy, heavy rock.

The debut release from Bennington's new side project Dead by Sunrise similarly fuses ambient atmosphere, trashy punk and bleeding-heart melodies onto a framework of pop-metal songwriting. But while "Out of Ashes" has moments of spark, it's more scattershot and less ambitious than the music Bennington makes with Linkin Park.

Bennington's self-laceration is pushed to the front of the mix here. The Foo Fighters-ish "Crawl Back In" has an odd return-to-the-womb psychology to it. Whoever heard of a rocker singing "I don't want to lose my innocence" before? The sounds likewise are a bit lost -- "Let Down" is a fitting title for a song built on synthetic drum presets.

The band is at its best when rocking the hardest. The metalcore grind of "My Suffering" and the Queens of the Stone Age riffage of "Inside of Me" prove Bennington still can pen the kind of inspiring choruses that have earned him a devoted following among angsty teen males. As a rock star side project, though, Dead by Sunrise has an unlikely fault -- it's not nearly indulgent enough.

-- August Brown

Dead by Sunrise
"Out of Ashes"
(Warner Bros.)
Two stars (Out of four)

Comments

[Charla]

I think Chesters side new cd is great, why compare it to Linkin Park, when he had said his self that it is something totally differant??

[Tyler]

I would simply rate this album as poor to mediocre emotional bullshit. And I would like to ask the author, have you ever heard metalcore before? None of the songs on the album, let alone "My Suffering" show any elements of metalcore.

[Michael Scofield]

Yeah, I agree with absolutely everything you said,I was quite anxious to listen to this album, but it doesnt really have the standard I was expecting. Chester Bennington is my favourite singer in the world but I had higher expectations than this. It didn't really produce thos hit singles from the Linkin Park factory I had been waiting for, like Mike Shinoda managed with his side project Fort Minor and his hit single Remember the name. It's still a great album but I would only recommend it to those devoted Linkin Park followers such as me. Still this has been quite nice taster for the upcoming Linkin Park album in wich all the fans expectations will be without a doubt be satisfied.

[Ashleigh Craig]

I think that this is one of the best cds that was ever made. And Chester is right... you cant compare this cd to one of Linkin Parks. But I still tink that some of the songs should have been Likin Parks. And you musnt just think about Chester Bennington... there are others in the band as well.

Just for the record, I think that its great that Chester is in another band!