It’s not Linkin Park, but fans will hear a familiar voice when the group’s lead singer, Chester Bennington, appears in Taipei tomorrow night with his side project, Dead By Sunrise, at Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914).
Bennington takes a self-professed confessional tone in Out of Ashes, Dead By Sunrise’s debut album, which was released in autumn last year. Both the album title and the band’s name refer to the singer’s past personal problems, which revolved around his divorce with his first wife and addiction to alcohol and drugs.
In a press release from his label Warner Music, Bennington said the album “came out of wondering, literally, whether I was going to make it to tomorrow.”
Spoken in true rock ’n’ roll fashion, but Bennington appears to have emerged from his troubles on top. He continues to enjoy enormous success with Linkin Park, whose blend of hip-hop, alternative rock and metal has earned the group several Grammy awards and led to headline tours of stadiums around the world.
In addition to feeding the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll mystique, Bennington has settled into another archetypal mold, the modern rock star as entrepreneur. He co-owns a tattoo parlor in Las Vegas and runs a clothing line called Ve’ Cel.
But die-hard fans at tomorrow’s show will likely be focused on Bennington’s angst-ridden voice, which takes center stage in this first ever solo venture. Dead By Sunrise sees the vocalist getting more melodic and pop-oriented thanks in part to his five-piece backing band, composed of friends from several Los Angeles-based synthrock groups.
In contrast to Linkin Park’s nu-metal sound, Dead By Sunrise’s brand of rock is more straightforward and laced with catchy pop hooks. In an interview with the Taipei Times last year, Bennington cited grunge, punk and 1980s electronic pop from the “New Romantic movement” as his major influences, which can be heard in Out of Ashes. The album shifts between songs like the guitar-drenched Fire and the keyboard synthesizer-driven Too Late.
Though Bennington’s lyrics for Dead By Sunrise draw from direct personal experience, they cater to a pop universality and sense of melodrama that resonates with Linkin Park’s music. In Let Down, a song about his divorce, he sings in the chorus: “I don’t want to be let down / I don’t want to live my life again / Don’t want to be lead down the same old road.”
When Bennington was here last summer, he was singing with Linkin Park to a stadium crowd of 40,000 people. Tomorrow’s show will be a much more intimate affair. The concert takes place in a former warehouse at Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which seats around 2,000.
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