Watch Sunflower Dead Bring Heavy Music Back to Life
We’ve gotten the chance to talk a little about Sunflower Dead, now on tour with Powerman 5000 and (HED) p.e., but this week we got to experience the band live…and were completely blown away, as was the rest of the crowd, a combination of Sunflower “veterans” and those who’d never heard the band before.
Music is such a subjective art form that, if I may paraphrase an old adage, one person’s favorite band may cause another’s worst headache, but for those of you whose tastes run the gamut from rock to the really heavy stuff, I feel safe in referring to Sunflower Dead as the perfect band…a phrase I never thought I’d have reason to use.
Check out a poster of SD and you’ll see a band in odd/quasi-“scary” make-up and likely get an understandably misleading impression of just how much talent you’re looking at ~ I’ll be the first to admit I did exactly that, half expecting to see a band that was primarily about their look and coming across as bizarre…knowing the eye for true talent of the team who represents them has, though, I knew there had to be something more…and “more” is the understatement of the century.
Sunflower Dead has somehow managed to arrive at that magical place where precisely the right amount of rock, metal, freak, movement, stage presence, aggression, exceptional musicianship, cohesiveness as a band, magnetic showmanship, and the intangible but vitally important “that something special” all meet and produce the strongest, most riveting performance we’ve seen in quite a while, one that really could reanimate someone’s appreciation of music if it had begun to wane from seeing too many bands who have lost that fire.
Sunflower live in May, photo courtesy of facebook.com/sunflowerdead
Nothing about Sunflower is contrived ~ even the make-up that has caused my original doubts is simply…make-up…they don’t flaunt it, it’s not over-the-top, it’s just a different look that doesn’t overshadow or draw any focus from their music ~ and they filled the stage, both literally, between equipment and musicians, and with sound and energy and a professional polish that again, magically, in no way reined in the power or “realness” of their performance. Some bands walk on stage and you can almost feel them becoming the musicians they need to be for the show; Sunflower Dead (who, I noticed, came out into the audience at difference times and with no fanfare to watch the bands with whom they were sharing this bill) take the stage and it’s immediately clear that, collectively and individually, they are always the musicians they need to be, authentically and to the core. This band knows who they are and what they want to give their audience.
We’ve got plenty of pix of Sunflower Dead (and PM5K, (HED) p.e., and the other bands who played the main stage) coming soon, plus Alyce will be interviewing the band, but ‘til then, here’s a short video (forgive the quality, my cell phone tried its best!) of some of SD’s performance…Hope it inspires you to get their original self-titled album (available here at Amazon) and to jump on the next chance you have to see them live…which, I suspect, will be when they headline their own tour.