According to their website, Nashville trio The Dead Deads include, “Failure, Bjork, Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, NOFX, Pavement, Pink Floyd, Queen, Weezer, Helmet, Cream, Beck and The Pixies,” amongst their biggest influences… Although that sounds more than a little bit confusing, the actual sounds churned out by Meta Dead, Daisy Dead, and McQueen Dead (Yes, Dead serves as all of their last names.) are plenty cohesive, along the lines of classic ‘70s rock riffs, dressed up in angsty ‘90s alt rock sonic swagger. The Dead Deads have toured alongside many heavy hitters of hard rock (in addition to playing both KISS and Motorhead’s respective cruises) and were supposed to kick off the night for The Darkness last May at Union Transfer, before the world more or less came to a stop in the least exciting way imaginable, but they’ve got plenty in the works at the moment. August 20th will see the release of The Dead Dead’s latest album, Tell Your Girls It’s Alright, on Rumble Records and, during a recent chat, bassist Daisy Dead tells me that the band are ready to get back out on the scene: “We’re just excited and eager to get our record out there, hopefully do some tours and shows. I am optimistic.”
The Dead Deads’ latest single and accompanying video, “Murder Ballad II,” dropped last month and features Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour (in both the video and the song). The track is a quirkily creepy southern rock take on the song’s namesake that serves as a sequel to one of Taylor’s favorite songs by the band, which Daisy tells me while explaining how The Dead Deads and the metal icon got together.
“He learned about us through a fan on Twitter and did check us out. He hooked us up with Stone Sour, and we did a one-off and he put us on an Apple playlist, but then he took us out with Stone Sour and Halestorm on their Canadian tour. He’s really cool and creative and doin’ all kinds of stuff… ‘Murder Ballad’ was his favorite song on the album we had at the time, so he worked with Meta on this sequel to it… It’s fun collaborating with anybody just because it’s new ideas. I think our next one will be a cross-genre, with someone from like country, R&B, or hip-hop, but go outside of our genre.”
Although we still have a few months before the album drops, “Murder Ballad II” is actually the fourth single from Tell Your Girls It’s Alright. The album’s first single, “In For Blood,” is an exercise in rambunctious new wave that sounds a bit like Shiny Toy Guns on Jäger and crushed Adderall. “Hey Girlfriend,” which features Julia Lauren of The Foxies, is a hooky grunge number reminiscent of early Veruca Salt. And “Deal With Me” embraces the glam and funk elements of so much of the ‘70s rock that Rob Zombie has used to soundtrack his horror movies. The breadth of sounds that find their way onto Tell Your Girls It’s Alright is something that the band is especially excited about, Daisy tells me: “We had the luxury of a good producer, a good budget, and Rumble Records let us be as creative as we want. So, this is like our Sgt. Pepper’s, our ‘album’ album.” She also tells me that the band certainly isn’t finished with advance promotion of the album: “We’ve joked that we’re gonna Beyonce this record [laughs], meaning have videos for every single song.”
