you know um there is this very specific, almost
cinematic romanticism that we tend to attach
to the concept of a debut album. Oh, absolutely.
It's really one of the great myths of music history.
Right. Like we always picture this group of scruffy
kids in a garage, maybe in Seattle or Manchester.
Yeah, with cheap instruments. Exactly. Just making
noise. And then suddenly they accidentally stumble
onto a sound that changes the world. It's the
whole lightning in a bottle narrative. We want
to believe that great art just, you know, happens
organically. But today, for this deep dive, we
are going to look at a debut album that completely
dismantles that romantic idea. Completely. We
are digging into the source material surrounding
the 2017 album Misanthrope by the American band
Dead. And I have to tell you, based on the release
data, the chart history, the personnel credits
from Sure Tone Records. This was no accident.
Oh, 100%. This is arguably one of the most calculated
launches in modern rock history. Yeah. When you
peel back the layers of Miss Antrope, you are
not finding garage demos. You're finding a master
class in demographic targeting. And a production
lineup that honestly shouldn't make sense on
paper. Which is why our mission today is to decode
that engineering. Right. We're unpacking how
this specific record fits into the new metal
genre. looking at the heavy hitter behind the
console and analyzing the data behind their chart
success. And before we get into the mechanics
of all that, we need to anchor ourselves in the
timeline. The release date we're looking at is
July 21st, 2017. Which, if you remember the musical
landscape of 2017, it's a weird time for rock
music. It is a very weird time. Right. If you
look at the charts in 2017, Nu Metal, that...
rhythmic, aggressive, bounce -heavy sound from
the late 90s and early 2000s that was supposed
to be long dead. Yeah, the trend cycle had totally
moved on to indie pop and mumble rap. Exactly.
So for a new band to debut with this specific
sound in the middle of the summer of 2017, it
was technically a massive risk. It's like wearing
bell bottoms in the 90s. You're either way behind
the curve or you're trying to start something
brand new. And the data suggests they were betting
on the latter. They were betting on a revival
before it actually happened. So let's look at
who they actually are. Who was in the band dead?
Because this isn't just a random assortment of
local musicians. No, and this is where that garage
band myth really falls apart. The lineup on the
record is Joe Cotella on lead vocals, David Ludlow
on guitar and backing vocals, Matt Reinhardt
on drums, and Kyle Kolsch on bass. It's a pretty
standard four -piece setup. But this is not their
first rodeo. I was digging through the related
artists and category notes in the source material,
and I saw a connection to a band called Greeley
Estates. Right. And this is the first major clue
that we aren't dealing with rookies here. David
Ludlow and Kyle Kolsch both came from Greeley
Estates. Which is a completely different vibe.
Totally. Now, for you listening, if you weren't
deep in the Warped Tour scene in the mid -2000s,
Greeley Estates was a metalcore band. And there
is a massive difference between metalcore and
nu metal. Huge difference. difference. Greeley
States was much more in the vein of screaming,
breakdowns, very chaotic, fast -paced, post -hardcore
stuff. It's technical, it's frantic, it is definitely
not music you can dance to in the traditional
sense. Okay, so help me understand the pivot
here. You've got guys who spent years playing
technical, chaotic metalcore. Why do they suddenly
slow it down, tune the guitars lower, and start
playing new metal as dead? It's a shift in the
bounce. Metalcore is about speed and chaos, but
nu metal is about the groove. It's highly rhythmic.
It's accessible. Oh, okay. By transitioning from
Greeley Estates to Dead, these musicians were
effectively simplifying their playing to maximize
the hook factor. They took all their experience
knowing how to tour, handle gear, be professionals,
and applied it to a genre that is just inherently
more radio friendly. That makes a lot of sense.
They already had their 10 ,000 hours of practice.
They just changed the vehicle they were driving.
Precisely. They weren't learning how to play.
They were learning how to craft a very specific
sound for a specific market. And radio friendly
is a key phrase there. Yeah. Because when I looked
at the production credits for Misanthrope, I
actually laughed out loud. I thought it was a
typo. Let me guess. You saw the name John Feldman.
I did. And look, I grew up on pop punk. I know
John Feldman is the front man of the ska band
Goldfinger. I know him as the guy who produced
Blink -182, All Time Low, Five Seconds of Summer.
Yeah. He is the architect of shiny California
pop punk. So explain this to me like I'm five.
Why does a band called Dead releasing an album
called Misanthrope, which literally means a hatred
of humanity, hire the guy who writes songs about
pizza to produce their heavy metal record? It's
brilliant, actually. If you analyze nu metal
musically, it actually has way more in common
with pop music than it does with extreme death
metal. Really? Yeah. It relies heavily on verse
-chorus structures. It needs big anthemic hooks
that get stuck in your head. And John Feldman
is a master of the airworm. So he brings the
structure. He brings the polish and the discipline.
Feldman treats a heavy guitar riff the exact
same way he treats a pop synthesizer. He compresses
it, makes it punchy, and ensures it doesn't get
muddy. Right, because a lot of debut metal albums
sound messy. The drums drown out the vocals or
the guitars are just too fuzzy. Exactly. But
Feldman's production on Misanthrope is clinically
clean. Every vocal part is audible. Every chorus
hits at the exact same volume. It sounds expensive.
Because that was the goal. He turned their aggression
into a product. He ensured that even though the
aesthetic was dark and heavy, the songs were
fundamentally catchy. It's sort of a spoonful
of sugar approach to heavy music. That is such
a fascinating way to look at it. It's like putting
a feral dog in a designer suit. That's a perfect
analogy. It's still dangerous, but it looks great
on TV. And speaking of looking great on TV, that
brings us to the second pillar of their rollout.
You have the pop polish from Feldman, but you
can't lose your street cred. Right, you can't
look soft to the metal crowd. Exactly. Enter
the man in the red backward cap. Fred Durst.
Yep. The sources highlight that the official
music video for their breakout single, Anti -Everything,
wasn't just directed by some hired gun. It was
produced and directed by Fred Durst. The frontman
of Lip Bizkit. which is huge now fred durst is
a polarizing figure sure people either love him
or they really don't but in the context of nu
metal he is the godfather he's the aesthetic
standard bearer by getting durst to direct the
video dead wasn't just getting a director they
were buying a cosign stamp of approval Exactly.
It was a signal to every Limp Bizkit fan, every
Korn fan, anyone who missed the year 1999 saying,
hey, it is okay to like this band. The boss approves.
And visually, you can totally see it. I watched
the video for the prep. It's gritty. It's chaotic.
It uses those fisheye lens angles that were everywhere
in the late 90s. It's pure nostalgia marketing.
In 2017, we were just starting to see the 20
-year nostalgia cycle for Nu Metal kick in. And
Dead positioned themselves at the absolute front
of that wave. So we've established the product
is engineered perfectly. Veteran musicians, a
pop producer, an icon directing the video. But
all that dies without distribution. Right. I
want to look at the singles strategy because
the timeline and the source material tells a
story of extreme patience. It was a classic drip
feed strategy. They did not just dump the album
and hope for the best. Let's trace it for the
listener. The album drops July 21st, 2017. But
when does the public actually first hear Dead?
December 23rd, 2016, seven full months prior,
they dropped the track FMFY. Which stands for,
well, we'll let you figure that one out. It's
very polite. Very polite. And notice, they didn't
do a full music video for this first track. The
notes specifically say it started with a lyric
video. Which is a crucial distinction, right?
A full video costs tens of thousands of dollars.
A lyric video is a fraction of that. Exactly.
Releasing FMFY as a lyric video first was them
testing the waters. It's a low -risk hello to
build the brand without breaking the bank. And
FMFY is a very aggressive track. It establishes
the attitude, but it wasn't really the radio
hit. No, it's just the appetizer. The main chorus
came in February 2017. February 25th, specifically.
Anti -everything. the second strike with the
fred durst video so look at that pacing december
is the teaser february is the massive single
with the celebrity director they let that marinate
for months then in june right before the album
drops they released dead to me and they don't
stop there the sources list Remember the Enemy
in September 2017 and Hate Me way later in January
2018. This strategy keeps the band in the conversation
for well over a year. Most bands drop a record,
put out a video, and disappear. Right. But dead
and sure -tone records ensure there was a new
reason to talk about them every three or four
months. Which extends the life cycle of the whole
project. Instead of being old news by August,
they're pushing singles the next calendar year.
Vital in the modern streaming era, you have to
constantly remind people you exist. I want to
pivot to how the market actually reacted, because
strategy is great, but did anyone actually buy
it? The charts are where the rubber meets the
road. And for a debut in 2017, the numbers are
genuinely impressive. Let's start with the album
charts. Misanthro peaked at number three on the
U .S. Heatseekers albums chart. Now, for the
listener who doesn't track Billboard, what is
a heatseeker? Think of the Billboard 200 as the
major leagues. That's Taylor Swift, Drake, Metallica.
The Heatseekers chart is the minor leagues. It
tracks acts that have never cracked the top 100
of the main chart. So it's the definitive measure
of the next big thing. Precisely. Hitting number
three means they were effectively the bronze
medalists of all new breaking artists in the
U .S. that week. That shows genuine organic growth.
Right. And they actually made it to number 16
on the independent albums chart and number 80
on top album sales. Which in 2017, getting people
to buy a physical album and not just stream it
is a big deal. But the real driver for rock bands
is radio play. And this is where the singles
performance really shines. You're talking about
the active rock charts. Let's run the numbers.
Anti -Everything peaked at number 18 on US Mainstream
Rock and number 20 on Active Rock. Breaking the
top 20 on your first real push is massive. It
puts you in rotation next to bands like Disturbed
and Korn. That validates your festival booking
fees. Yeah, you're not playing the parking lot
stage at noon anymore. Exactly, you're on the
main stage. And they followed it up. Remember
the Enemy hit number 21 on Mainstream Rock and
20 on Active Rock. Hate Me hit 32. That consistency
proves they weren't a one -hit wonder. Right.
Radio programmers saw the audience reacting to
the band's overall sound, not just one catchy
track. I want to shift gears and talk about the
architecture of the album itself. The physical
makeup of the record. The very first thing I
noticed was the runtime. 37 minutes and 24 seconds.
That is incredibly tight for a metal album. Just
11 tracks. It is, and I think it's perfect. Listener
fatigue is very real with heavy music. If you
have an hour of screaming and heavy guitars,
by track eight, you're exhausted. By keeping
it under 40 minutes, Did ensures you listen to
the whole thing. It's all killer, no filler.
Get in, say your piece, get out. And the track
walkthrough is fascinating. They front load it
so aggressively. Oh, they put almost every single
right at the top. Right. You've got architect,
then anti -everything, dead to me, FMFY, remember
the enemy. Is that confidence or is that just
adjusting to the streaming era? It's pure streaming
strategy. If a listener gets bored in the first
three minutes on Spotify, they click away. You
can't save the best for last. You have to hit
them with the hooks immediately. Exactly. By
the time you get to the back half of the album,
tracks like Disassociate, Rope, Inside, I Exist,
you're already hooked. And the back half gets
pretty dark fanically. It does. But they save
one surprise for the end. The final track is
simply called Beautiful. Which is such an interesting
juxtaposition. You have this record called Misanthrope,
full of angst and songs about alienation, and
it ends on beautiful. It provides catharsis.
After 30 -something minutes of aggression, it
acts as a release valve. And again, that's Feldman's
production genius, building an emotional arc
into a heavy framework. It really is a case study
in adaptation. You have metalcore musicians adapting
to new metal. a pop producer adapting to heavy
rock, and a rollout adapting 90s nostalgia for
2017. And it worked. They proved Nu Metal wasn't
dead. It just needed a facelift. So as we wrap
this up, what's the core takeaway for you from
all these sources? For me, it's the power of
the right team. You can have great songs, but
without Feldman's polish and Durst's cosign,
they might have stayed local. Dead understood
that music at this level is a team sport. That's
a great point. For me, it's the sheer efficiency
of it. 37 minutes, multiple charting singles,
a steady drip feed of content. It was a machine
perfectly built for its moment. Absolutely. But
I want to leave you, the listener, with a final
thought to chew on. The album title is Misanthrope.
A misanthrope is someone who actively dislikes
humankind and avoids society. Right. It's the
ultimate antisocial statement. Yet, this album
was produced by a pop -it maker. promoted with
a high -budget video directed by a celebrity
and specifically engineered to reach millions
of people on mainstream radio. It's quite the
paradox. It really is. Yeah. So you have to wonder,
was the anti -everything attitude a genuine reflection
of the band's worldview? Or was misanthropy simply
the most marketable product they could sell to
a frustrated rock audience in 2017? Were they
truly misanthropes or were they just giving you
the exact soundtrack you needed to feel like
one? The chart data might just answer that for
us. It just might. That's it for this deep dive.
Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on
the next one.