Dead Posey are a duo that mixes the artistry of music and visuals to take you to a world that they created. It’s dark, beautiful, melancholy, and energetic. It’s a world where the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, David Lynch, and Jim Morrison would call home.
Dead Posey have already created a buzz with the recent release their second EP ‘Malfunction’. Along with the EP, they also released accompanying videos for two of the tracks ‘Parasite’ and ‘Holy Roller’. The band has kept a mystique about them since the release of their first EP ‘Freak Show’ two years ago. So how can a band that is getting so much notoriety stay so elusive?
Mayhem Music Magazine wanted to find out more about the married couple Danyell Souza and Tony F. who form the duo Dead Posey. So we took this opportunity to ask them a few questions to get to find out more about them.
First off, tell us how did you two meet and when did music become part of your relationship?
Danyell: We met about eight and a half ago and we were both doing are own things. Tony was in his former band. We started talking and dating and we actually wrote our first song together just for fun. We still did our own thing. I started my own band. He was still in his other band. A few years went by and then Dead Posey was obviously born because of that initial working together. We kind of flirted with the idea of writing together and now you see where we are at now.
Tony: We were doing our own things musically and supporting each other in that. Then there was sort of a moment when after a few years it was like “hey, why don’t we really write a song”. Danyell had this pretty clear idea of the type of music she wanted to make with this dark aesthetic and some of the influences we talked about at the time and that first song was ‘Holy Grail’. We really liked how it turned out so it was like “why don’t we keep doing this”. It really moved kind of naturally after that and here we are.
Since the release of your first EP “Freak Show” just two short years ago, the band still carries the melancholy vocal stylings but the rhythmic changes carry an even darker industrial driving tone this time around. How did the group’s sound travel down this path?
Danyell: I feel like as a band or as an artist, people always strive to keep on evolving with their sound. I feel we’re meant to go down this route because everything is aligning even more with Dead Posey and how we feel. I think the music sounds even more on what we intended.
Tony: I think on the first EP, we were really into the stomps and a little bit more of the bluesy, greasy, kind of swampy thing which we still love. It will always have a big place in our hearts.
Danyell: The first EP the lyrics were still more on the dark side of life to a certain degree. Maybe not ‘Freak Show’ but the other three have some of those little recipes. On this EP we definitely wanted the sound to have the same feeling as the lyrics did.
Tony: We were bringing in a little more of our classic influences over the years. Whether it was Depeche Mode or Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, The Kills; a little bit widening the soundscape a bit and having some electronic touches in there. That sort of made it a little darker which went along with the lyrics. We wanted to keep what Dead Posey was and the core of it intact. To us it was a way of having that but expanding the sound.
Danyell, you have such a distinct vocal tone. Who inspired your vocal styling?
Danyell: There’s a lot of them from Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, to Marilyn Manson and Shirley Manson, even Grace Slick. I tend to like vocalists that you can feel their character in their voice and it doesn’t have to be so perfect. That really intrigues me when a vocalist is a little more all over the place instead of just perfect pitch.
Tony: When I first started hearing Danyell, even before Dead Posey and even before her earlier bands; one of the first things we did together for fun in 2013 was that we went into my studio and recorded a version of ‘Come as You Are’ by Nirvana. As soon as she got on the mic, she owned it.
Danyell: That’s what honestly brought me out of the closet as a singer. As soon as I got on that mic was when I was like maybe I can do this. It kind of makes you feel larger than life when you’re on the mic with the earphones on and you can really critique what you’re doing.
Tony: Staying on the topic of D’s voice. With this EP in particular, we really wanted to show a little bit more range dynamically. Let the tone of her natural power come through. On ‘Freak Show’ we loved garage, fucked up, distorted vocal tones. We were really going for that. This one we saw a touch of that on ‘Head of The Snake’. We wanted to experiment and move away from that. That was exciting for us to do on this EP.
Even with the experimentation of Danyell’s vocals, her tone is what keeps a consistency between the first EP and this one. It’s the instrumentation that takes on a whole new feel this time around.
Tony: One thing we did on this one was I played drums as well.
Danyell: You play everything!
Tony: On this EP I played a drum set where on the first one I kind of sampled loops and program stuff. This was a little more a classic drum performance that blended in with the electronic element to give it a more driving rhythm to it.
Tony, the music is very much in contrast to the music you played your previous band (EVE 6). Is this the type music you wanted to play all along?
Tony: (He laughs) I’m not knocking my previous band whatsoever. I love a lot of different types of music. I love what you might consider punk bands, pop-punk bands. That’s always going to be part of my musical DNA.
Danyell: It’s like whomever you work with you’re going to get something different.
Tony: My tastes go all over the place. Depeche Mode is my favorite band of all time. So it was cool to bring some of that element into Dead Posey. D loves Depeche as well. I wouldn’t say I was itching to get out of my last band to play a different type of music. Now that this is fully engaged, this is all I want to do now. It’s the next chapter. I wouldn’t have left my previous band to be in another band that was kind of like that. I don’t think this is like that. This is totally different sonically and a different genre. It’s still rock music. Like my prior band and this one, it’s all about the melody, songs, and attitude.
Talk us through your song writing process?
Danyell: What we’ve been doing so far is we’ll have our own ideas that we compile as far as lyrics go or beats. Tony will have different beats or guitar riffs or ideas melodically. Then we come together and do a “show and tell” and then intertwine them. Sometimes we start from scratch from a saying like “bad things come in threes” and write a whole song around it.
Tony: That came from a couple bad strokes of luck happening to us. Then it was like “here comes the third one” so let’s write a song about that.
Danyell: It comes in all different shapes but we definitely subscribe to doing our own things separately first to get our seeds out there as artists without the other person critiquing it at first.
Tony: That’s an important balance for us we learned how best to do. We’re both really engaged in all aspects of it. We have to be careful and respectful of the other person on having their time to play in the sandbox as it were. For instance on this EP on ‘Head of The Snake’, Danyell had finished the lyrics even before I saw them. Before there was even one note of music, that’s where the lyrics inspired me. The guitar riff came from that. That can be vice versa where I’ll have a musical groove and she’ll get inspired.
Danyell: Also with this EP, after we get the initial song written. Then the production is what takes forever. We’re both in there to find out what works with this sound or maybe make the beat a little more like this. When it comes to the production side of it, that’s where we can be in the weeds for a long time.
Tony: I think ‘Holy Roller’ had that. We had that sounding one way and we re-imagined it a different way. ‘Bad Things’ too. ‘Head of The Snake’ and ‘Parasite’ once we found its thing it was a pretty natural flow. We’re doing everything in the studio ourselves so you have to be careful of too many options. It’s a constant process.
You released a music video for the track “Parasite” last week & a live video for “Holy Roller’ this past Monday. How has making videos changed for both of you?
Tony: The video process for us in general is really important. At the early stages of writing a song Danyell will be thinking visuals and concepts.
Danyell: The easiest way so far for me is when a song is starting to form I’ll go on Pinterest and find different visuals that give you that feeling. I’ll start a board for a video storyboard. So if you go on my Pinterest, it looks very morbid. It’s not cute at all. Video is everything with Dead Posey visuals. It’s just as important as the song. Of course the songs are number one. The aesthetic is really important to us just to give you a visual of a Dead Posey world that we created.
Tony: As far as the video themselves, it’s definitely a case where as we’re finishing the EP the world fell in to this terrible state.
Danyell: a Malfuction.
Tony: We had the expectation of working with the label, filming a video or two, working with some directors. Then it was like that’s not going to happen with the state of things. Luckily we had this footage that we had shot for ‘Parasite’ right before everything had gone down. Not really sure what to do with it.
Danyell: The videos we were filming were for Spotify because they have those eight second canvas videos for each song. So we were doing two or three takes of ‘Parasite’ for the Hell of it and maybe we’ll use it for something. Not even thinking that this would become our video.
Tony: So when this happened the EP was coming out. We’re working with the label on an animated video for ‘Head of The Snake’ but it wasn’t ready and we need to get something out. Let’s take this ‘Parasite’ footage and Danyell to her credit dove into Final Cut Pro and pretty much edited the whole thing. I had some input but she put everything together with all the overlays and visuals & gave us a pretty competent music video that we were able to release with the EP. Music videos these days, the budgets aren’t what they were ten to fifteen years ago but technology is incredible now. I think creative artist can do a lot for a lot less these days and I think we’re a pretty good example of that.
You did a ‘Malfunction’ EP Cover change up at the last minute. What was the concept of the original cover?
Danyell: Originally it was a CAT Scan of my brain. It went perfect for the title ‘Malfunction’.
Tony: You got an MRI last year
Danyell: So it was “let’s use this”. That was going to be the album cover. Then when all the songs came together and we’ve been in lockdown, I had this feeling that this cover is just not working for me. I was looking around the house and what has that feeling of malfunction and grabbed some props. Like the rat, the rosary, our gun and I put some lipstick on and smeared it. I was trying to insinuate religion and war has always caused malfunctions in this world. It went hand in hand with the way the EP came out lyrically. The lipstick smear is like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you don’t have to be “perfect” kind of thing. The Cat Scan image was cool but I like the cover now, it means more.
With no touring until 2021, how will you be using your time going forward?
Danyell: Definitely going to be writing and recording our first full length album.
Tony: We’ll be putting out an actual album. Not just EPs forever.
Danyell: Hopefully, we’ll be able to shoot a video or two for ‘Bad Things’ and ‘Holy Roller’ within this time.
Tony: Because we have this animated thing being worked on now for ‘Head of The Snake’. It’ll be awesome. It would be nice to do at least one more video for one of the other songs.
Danyell: Maybe do another live stream at some point.
Tony: And think of some other creative ways to keep talking to the fans and playing stuff. We might be working up another cover or two whether it’s for a “live from the house” performance or possibly for recording. We’re putting our ideas together for the next round of writing songs. Touring is amazing and we miss it and it’s really a bummer not being able to be out there especially supporting a new release but when you’re out there it’s kind of hard to write. So let’s take this time to write. The tough thing is not having the experiences as sort of an input for the song writing.
Danyell: We’ll also watch some David Lynch movies and read some good books but mostly focusing on writing the first full length for sure. Our studio is here so we would be here anyways.
Tony: We’re pretty fortunate to be in this environment because luckily for us, this is how we’ve always done it for Dead Posey.
Danyell: and we’re together
Tony: We don’t have to do mobile sessions or anything. We really can put out more music even within the lockdown. We feel very, very bad for many other millions of musicians all around the world that can’t play live. They can’t record the way their use to. They can’t even write the way their use to. It’s a real tough time for everybody, musicians in particular. We’re grateful that we can make music here.
What role does Social Media now play in the success of artists?
Danyell: It connects you directly to your fans. It’s the closest thing to fans having your phone number to text you. I feel it connects the artist straight to their fans which wasn’t a thing before. As an introvert it’s hard sometimes. We aren’t the type to take selfies and stuff so we try to do it in an artistic enough way where we’re still connecting with them but we’re keeping our allure to a certain degree. To have our little bit of separation but we like to be connected to our fans too.
Tony: Since there’s no live shows at all, it’s really the only way for a band to promote their stuff and be creative with the exception of releasing new songs to streaming services.
Danyell: Even after the shows we’re used to having our merch table and being able to say hi to the different fans that come to the shows so right now social media is our merch table basically.
And a final question. What would you like music lovers to know about Dead Posey?
Tony: There’s a lot more coming and stay tuned. We really miss not being able to play live but we will be back in as many corners of the world as we can as soon as we’re allowed to.
Follow Dead Posey on:
FACEBOOK / APPLE MUSIC / INSTAGRAM / YOUTUBE / TWITTER / SPOTIFY
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