Timeline - 2024 – deadalivemerch

2024

A Visual History of Dead Alive.

Commentary by Count Scapula

No Signs of Life - Live

The very beginning of 2024 we had a Dead Alive writing weekend to finish writing the songs for "The Madness of Dr Ludvig Von Brainmatter." I have all of the lyrics written first as well as a big chunk of riffs for the songs, some even fully written like "Flip the Switch," "Fear...Conditioned," most of "Volt" and "From Beyond." We all worked together to fully finish the album, splitting off on which songs each of us are interested in focusing on. Dead Beat, naturally, adds his drum style to the whole album and the two of us wrote "Hollowman" together. Dedmen Walken came up with some added bass sections on the songs including a bass solo on "Volt" and wrote the strings for "Gone Mad." Dedmen and I worked together to write "Re-Agent." Manthing focused on "Exhumed" and all of us added riffs to "No Signs of Life." I did some song doctoring after we got all of the parts together and wrote out the tabs, and made adjustments here and there to riffs to make it all more cohesive with the "Dead Alive style."

Recording "THE MADNESS"

Recording was a lot of fun. We came in much more prepared then the first time. We kinda had to as well because we only had the budget to record for two days, and record 10 songs. Most of everything was done in one or two takes. I did have to do a couple of pick up sessions to finish vocals, and I had to record a couple of the guitar solos at home. We recorded old school with live drums, and live tube amps. The only thing we did direct were the couple of the solos that I record at home.

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Fun Fact: The morning of our first studio day I woke up and turned my head to stretch myself awake an pulled a muscle in my neck and was in a wild amount of pain for the two days, unable to move my head. I still played all of the guitar for the scratch tracks and on the recordings, except for "Exhumed" which Manthing played on.

Working with Jeremiah Scott was awesome! He totally got what we're going for, and did an awesome job recording and mixing the album. All of the other guys in the band were Demon Hunter fans which was cool for them. I really like his first band, DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY. Jeremiah told us a bunch of cool stories of him working with other bands, being on the road, and other industry stories and lessons.

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Fun Fact: Jeremiah goes to my/my parents church, and I was talking to him about how we finished writing the album and we were looking for a studio to record, and he was interested in working with us! So we set up the studio time.

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In recent years, while I haven't personally had bad experiences with my church or the denomination I was a part of, I have began to distance myself from the Christian faith. Mostly as a result of things surrounding the 2024 election that I felt were not how Christians and Christianity should act and associate itself with. So I've became agnostic on the topic.

Fish Fest Battle of the Bands

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

There's a nice couple that were trying to do their part in organizing metal and rock events in Nashville, with varying success. They put together a Battle of the Bands "to see who would play their festival" later in the year, and the winning band would also get 100 vinyl made of their most recent/upcoming album. I was gunning for that vinyl...

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

We pulled out all the stops for this show. We opened the show with me being carried in a coffin and placed at the edge of the stage while the intro tracks were being played. The other started our first song "Rise" which I then crawled out of the coffin to take the stage and we started the show!

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Every show we give it our all. Tons of energy, headbanging, movement, and crowd interaction. To this day I am always covered in sweat after a show.

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At The end of the show I "died" and fell back into the coffin to end the set.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

We were the first band performing that evening, and the crowd hadn't really showed up yet, unfortunately. We did our sound check and everything was set in place. When we went into "Army of Darkness" after I took the stage, there was an issue... The power chord from my amp was unplugged...

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

Apparently they had sound checked the next band, and their front man had thought the gear was being shared and used my power chord on his amp and didn't tell me.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

We didn't win... In fact we were in last place. The "Judges" had favored the more "easy listening" bands, and the extreme metal bands were at the bottom of the rankings for the evening. Would we have done better if we didn't have those technical issues? Maybe. It still seemed very bias on the Judges taste and not on the "performance" aspect we were under the impression we were being judged on.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

Shortly after we finished recording the album, Dedmen told us that the show at the Battle of the bands was going to be his last show with Dead Alive. He was young and still figuring out what his path in life was going to be. He also wanted to get married to his girlfriend and work to prepare for that big life change. He got a new mask to replace his makeup and he only got to wear it for one show.

Dead Alive - Army of Darkness | Battle Clips

Fish Fest Trials 2024

Clips from the Fish Fest battle of the bands at the Vinyl Lounge in Nashville. 05/09/2024

We didn't win...

Kingston from the band Outpost unplugged the power cord from my amp. WTF bro?

NEW ENGLAND DEATH METAL FUNTIME BONANZA

NEDMFTB 2024

Dead Alive's first outing out of Nashville, playing at the NEW ENGLAND DEATH METAL FUNTIME BONANZA 2024 in Lebanon, Maine.

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This was a lot of fun. And met a lot of really cool people. My parents helped us get a trailer to haul our gear, and we got Dead Beat's band mate from Hive Mind Blunt Rotation to fill in for us on Bass. It was a 24 hour drive up there and about 18 hours back home.

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Introducing... Dreadward

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

After Dedmen left the band, we needed to find another member. The question is do we get another bassist or guitarist. I wasn't a very strong shred guitarist and neither was Manthing. Dead Alive needed a shredder!

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

There was one guy I had in mind for a while. But I had to wait for him to finish college before he would be available to play. Then Dreadward joined the band!

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

It was pretty much a done deal to me. We auditioned him, and he killed it on all of the songs! I offered him the position right after the initial audition.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

That first show with Dreadward was awesome! Our stage chemistry was at a whole new level, and I fit into the Bass player/vocalist role really easily.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

Dead Alive was getting better and better each show.

Notably, Ray had some family visiting from Europe, and they were blown away by the performance.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

We were already getting some notoriety, but now Dead Alive was a force to be reckoned with.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

One egg that we are still trying to crack was how to make the Nashville scene bigger.

Photo by Ray Lee Rose

I recommend also looking through our social media history as a "supplementary viewing" with this visual history. There are clips from various shows that I'm talking about that you just gotta see. This show there are some clips of Dreadward shredding on Army of Darkness that are just killer!

A Word of Warning...

The Madness of Dr. Ludvig Von Brainmatter

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

Now it was time to tie up the loose ends for the album release. We called Dedmen back for one last photoshoot.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

One of the things that we needed to do was plan a music video. So we built a set in "The Dungeon." The walls were provided free of charge from Ray's dad, I made the floor from an old wood fence that I tore down with a claw hammer over a week, We bought set dressings like the faux brick walls and other props, and rented lights.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

This is one of my favorite photos of the band.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

While The Count is a character within the band Dead Alive, I kind of see him like a horror host of sorts, like the Crypt Keeper, or Elvira. Having him be a sort of Narrator of the Monster stories we sing about.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

It's fun playing a character playing a character.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

Evil Pointy Guitars are superior to all other guitars. I absolutely loathe any guitar that just looks like a squire.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

I had a plastic neck bolt costume piece that I gave Manthing to wear for a photoshoot, to kind of put him in as the role of "The Monster." He immediately broke it trying to put it on.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

So I took the bolt parts and hand sewn them to some material I had laying around to create that costume piece. I thought It was punk and Misfits-y.

Photos by Ray Lee Rose

He only wore it for one show and then "would forget" to wear it for other shows. So instead of having him be "Manthing The Monster" we leaned into "Manthing The Creed Fan"