Al Byrne
The other day, I was introduced – via the excellent Kieron Gillen – to a short-lived internet boycott of the Fox Corporation’s various outlets in response to Fox News’ distortion of reality amid the American health service hoopla. All this amounted to for me was a much-needed deletion of my Myspace account, which was useless and rubbish in equal measures. Which actually applies to Myspace as a whole: whatever appeal it held as a social networking site has long since died in favour of the equally stupid Facebook (“NOTIFICATION: Anna has invited you to put the ‘I Heart Facebook Badges’ badge on your profile, you ridiculous social networking whore”), leaving Myspace to function solely as a way for musicians to stream their wares in an easy, free manner. Which can lead to good things, like the Soulsavers making their incredibly good new album Broken online this weekend (review coming very soon). And can also lead to very bad things, like the Arctic Monkeys coming to prominence, or, relevantly, Dead By Sunrise streaming their new single.
Dead By Sunrise is the oh-so-worthwhile side project of Linkin Park frontman, Chester Bennington, who now looks so old, it’s as if he’s being played by a strung-out version of his own grandfather. Flanked by a bevy of pale-skinned, dark-haired cohorts – seemingly chosen for their visual fidelity to the band’s moronic vampiric moniker rather than any sort of musical worth – their new song, “Crawl Back In”, sees Bennington make a dramatic artistic leap from Linkin Park’s usual grungy hard-rock guitar attack and angsty scream-sung vocals.
Except, of course, it does nothing of the sort. The only real notable difference between any Linkin Park track and “Crawl Back In” is a decreased focus on sub-par electronica frippery,which is – y’know – definitely appreciated. The downside is, aside from that, it’s a Linkin Park song. Even down to its title: remove “Back” from the song title, and then dwell on the resulting title for a couple of minutes. If nothing else, this will give you an excuse to take a short break from relentlessly skewering your own ear drums with a knitting needle.
Look, if you like Linkin Park because they’ve got loud guitars and some tiresome “I don’t wanna live like this”, twelve-year-old-boy-writing-poetry lyrics, I’m sure you’ll love “Crawl Back In”. Like Linkin Park’s songs, it’s got all the depth and entertainment value of the Twilight movie, and will probably appeal to much of the same market: stupid people. Anyway, go listen, and suffer it yourself.
