To see Dead Posey on stage is to see a band schooled in the alternative rock boom of the 90s, caught between the theatrics of industrial and the sonics of bands ranging from Garbage and NIN to Gary Numan, via New Order and Hole. It’s a hell of a mix and, for all that it raises the spectre of certain bands, Dead Posey have successfully carved their influences into something that’s uniquely theirs. As a case in point (and, as the band point out), they may not be the first band to tackle New Order’s ubiquitous Blue Monday, but it is the first time it’s been tackled by a female singer.
Like Garbage, NIN and their sartorially minded peers, Dead Posey appear larger than life on stage and you would be forgiven for thinking that the band would exude a similar rock detachment offstage. Yet, while the duo of Danyell Souza and Tony Fagenson have a magnetism that is irresistible, they’re also incredibly warm and down to earth, chatting freely about their influences despite the fact that they’ve been passed from pillar to post in the hot and hectic press area. It’s a genuine pleasure to spend some time with them, not least because their obvious love of the music shines through, but I’m also mindful of the fact that the next time they grace our shores, they’re almost certainly going to be playing much larger stages…
Following a brief greeting, the first thing I mention is that cover of Blue Monday, not least because it took me totally by surprise when the band aired it on stage (check out our review of Dead Posey & Download 2022 here)…
That cover of Blue Monday was really cool…
Danyell: Thank you! Yeah, that’s going to be one of the ones on our full-length, so we’re excited about it.
Tony: Yeah, we’re releasing some singles, leading up to the album and that’s going to be one of them…
But that song hasn’t been done, as far as we’ve seen, by a female vocalist and we love the version we just did… [pauses with a smile twitching on her lips]
Well, I hope so…
[Laughing] Yeah, we love *our* version…
No no no – because Orgy did it more… rock, and so, you know, we kind of add some of that energy, as opposed to the original. The original is awesome, of course, but we liked how Orgy did it twenty years ago, so we thought “you know what, let’s give it a whirl…”
We don’t have the synths on stage to pull off the original version, so we’ve got to do it our way.
I don’t think I’ve seen a band in this style in a long time, the energy you have, there’s something a little bit punky about it, a little bit industrial in the way the beats work…
Thank you, thanks a lot, we’re glad you noticed
We’re happy it’s translated, especially as we’ve been watching the Pistols… the Sex Pistols show – have you seen it?
I haven’t yet, no.
It’s super-exciting.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, it came out right before we came to England, and we were like “yes!”
We’re all about the piss ‘n’ vinegar!
It was a little bit of punk energy.
I think on your bio you mention bands like Garbage and Depeche Mode, I was wondering if P J Harvey was in there too?
I have always though that she sounds like P J Harvey for sure.
And then there’s NIN, Manson – the list goes on, so we’ve got a lot.
Definitely, we’re kind of a mishmash of stuff.
Hole – Courtney Love – I fucking love her. She’s one of a kind, so all that 90s stuff. It’s what gets us going.
A lot of stuff I grew up with and still love… [there’s a brief interruption at this point as a roving press photographer grabs a shot] The show today was so cool, and the crowd grew massively throughout, too.
It was so awesome.
You never know what to expect coming over here. This is our third time, and we’ve had a pretty warm welcome before, but with a festival you don’t know… the slots are all different. This exceeded our expectations. It was like wow! People just seem like they want to listen to music and are open to it.
Download came through!
Yeah!
Download came through, so thank you! And… after our set, there was a lot of fans at the barricade that I got to say hi to. Tony was packing up some shit, so I said hi to them for him. [To Tony] I said hi for you…
Thank you
And it was great to see lots of new faces and all that good stuff.
Because usually, at other shows, we were just supporting Theory of a Deadman for a couple of shows, and we go out to the merch table and kind of chat with fans. We didn’t even have merch up here; I think we messed up. Maybe we were supposed to send it way in advance or something.
You went through the process that a lot of bands did, where you put out an EP just at the point that the pandemic hit.
Yeah, you’re exactly right about that. It came out, we were on a label and the pandemic was happening. There was a lot of stuff going on in the world – Black Lives Matter and all that stuff going on and it was an interesting time to say the least. And, then we just got right into writing our full-length after that. It kind of got swept under the rug a little bit.
We weren’t able to tour to support it.
But you know wat’s cool, for us? Our first EP that we put out had a different flavour, and then “Malfunction” had its own flavour and I feel like those got us to where we are now for this new album. It’s its own era, its own flavour and it came from the tours and we’ve really put all of our influences into it. Our full set now is completely different than it was when we toured two years ago, so we’ve definitely tapped into more of our darker influences to a degree and we’ve become heavier. Because, in our core and in our souls, we’re rock ‘n’ roll through and through – punk rock…
We’re heavy mo-fos! Not as heavy as some bands on the bill, of course…
Well, heavy is relative… but when you’ve got the riffs and you’ve got that kind of drop tuning groove, that really locks people in.
That thing gets us going most times.
That’s kind of… I think a lot of things come from the rhythmic bed for us and then we work from there. Trying to have a real song sensibility in there driving it – choruses and everything like that. For us it feels like it’s all coming together with what we want to do musically.
We’re in a good place right now. I feel like we’re just getting started it. I feel like the sky is the motherfucking limit at this point.
Being locked down, obviously you guys are in a relationship, so were you able to work on things more effectively – because that’s something that very few bands have…
Of course, I mean yeah, we didn’t skip a beat really. We didn’t even think twice about it, we were like alright, let’s go into the studio and do our full-length album that we’ve been wanting to do.
It’s like, now, we’ve really got to write a bunch of new songs…”
…and we wanted to. We were filling it; we had a lot of inspiration while the world was fucking ending.
The pandemic didn’t actually change almost anything for us as far as the writing process goes. Just because it’s just the two of us that do that anyway. It did change us a little bit in how we began the recording, but not too much. Really it changed the live thing – not being able to do that. But maybe it was a good thing because we couldn’t play live, so we had to write. We didn’t have the fun distraction of getting out on stage.
But we missed playing live. We had a TV on at all times playing all the different festivals and people performing with their bands to keep that energy, because we couldn’t do it. So, just to be back here now is a dream. It feels amazing to be alive again. I feel like we all died and now we’re in this new reality, so it’s nice to be here.
The last question I have is to do with the lyrics, because one of the shifts I’ve noticed is bands moving away from the darkness and nihilism that seemed more common, and taking almost a blues approach where there is darkness and catharsis, but it’s more how to take those difficult situations and turn them into something relatable that people can actually feel positive about – does that make sense? Is that how you feel about it?
It’s how we’ve always felt.
I feel like we’ve always tapped into that, but as the band evolves, we have maybe got deeper and deeper into that. It naturally just happens. Just like a baby – a baby doesn’t start out walking, but eventually we all start walking and running and all that shit – it’s the same for a band.
Right
You start out not being able to crawl and then you evolve…
And you end up on the stage at Download
Exactly! So, I feel like we’re at the running phase and we’re moving forward to the sprinting stage. That’s how I feel about it now.
I mean, every time we do a song, it always comes from something Dee’s feeling, writing about in a journal… so we take that emotion and run with it and we always try to find what the story is in that – what’s something that people can take from that. It’s always been the process, pandemic or not.
