Before I start this review, let's have a little history lesson. Death By Stereo began their careers by releasing two very solid hardcore albums (If Looks Could Kill, I'd Watch You Die and Day of the Death) and winning a lot of fans over with their energetic live shows. In 2003, they released Into the Valley of Death, which showed the band embarking on a new sound, but still holding onto their punk rock roots. Then, two years later, came Death for Life, an album which sounded like Death By Stereo imitating a metalcore band. Four long years a couple more member changes later, they have a new album entitled Death is My Only Friend. The band's identity crisis continues and it's an even bigger mess than it ever was before.
To start things off, I had a bad feeling about this album before even listening to one song off it. The atrocious album cover, the stupid title and the fact that their last album sounded like the band was doing their best Killswitch Engage impression, already gave me negative feelings about it. So, then I play the album and then the first thing I hear is vocalist Efrem Schulz's heavy breathing followed by him shouting "4,3,2,1!" with a boring hard rock style verse following it. Then "The Ballad of Sid Dynamite" comes along. This song would even be out of place on Death for Life thanks to it's incredibly poppy chorus. "I Sing for You" is extremely predictable and generic with the band sounding more like a hard rock radio band. After this, I hear the over the top ballad, "The Last Song" complete with string section to make things sound even more ridiculous. At this point of the record, I decided that I'm not going to judge this as a Death By Stereo record because it is just so bad compared to the rest of their catalog. However, even as a stand alone record, Death is My Only Friend is still very, very poor.
One of my biggest complaints here is how bad Schulz's voice has gotten over the years. He experimented with a new, more extreme style of screaming on the last album and he continues to do so on Death is My Only Friend. If you didn't like it before, then you probably wont like it now. If his piercing scream isn't cringe worthy enough, there's his singing voice which has really gone downhill and is showcased fully on the re-recording of "Forever and a Day." His singing on this track is so bad it's almost painful to listen to and the fact that they subbed out the guitars in favor of a grand piano doesn't help either. Those radio-friendly tracks I mentioned earlier, are the only ones where he sounds almost bearable, unfortunately.
Despite all of this negativity, the record does have a few positive moments, most of them coming towards the end. "Welcome to the Party" begins with a thrash riff and contains a pretty impressive solo from guitarist Dan Palmer and new bassist Jeff Clark gets his chance to show off, as well. The song isn't completely boring and predictable like the majority of the record, either. "Fear of a Brown Planet" shows the band playing hardcore for a minute and forty-seven seconds. This is a complete change in gears compared to the rest of the record that it almost sounds awkward when it comes on despite it being closest thing to hardcore on here. And if you thought that was awkward then just wait until you hear the opening lines of "For All My Friends (The Unity Song)" which is a tad too explicit for me to post here. Oh, then it's followed by a hidden track that is mostly just Palmer shredding on his guitar. The inclusion of these last four songs are really odd. I enjoyed them more than anything else on here but they just sounded so out of place.
Death is My Only Friend is fifteen tracks long and has only four or five songs that are worthwhile. It's probably my biggest disappointment of the year despite feeling pessimistic going into it. With Schulz being the only original member remaining, it might be safe to say that they're almost like a different band now. Death By Stereo going in a more commercial, hard rock direction is pretty saddening that first, but in the end, I would probably take songs like "Dead to Me" and "I Sing for You" over most of the stuff on the radio despite them both having piss-poor lyrics, bad vocals, and boring song structures. My only hope of optimism with this record is that I find it on the shelf four years later and re-listen to it and think "You know, this isn't so bad." But I highly doubt it right now.
