Review by Brian McLean
Relapse Records continues with their limited pressing Live Underground Series with Live From the Relapse Contamination Festival with North Carolina’s Daylight Dies.
The Daylight Dies disc is the fourth installment of the series and, like the previous three from Bongzilla, Burnt by the Sun, and Dysrhythmia, has been strictly limited to 1000 copies.
The Contamination Festival was created and put on by Relapse Records on January 18, 2003 in Philadelphia and featured a slew of Relapse artists.
Daylight Dies’ line up at the time of the recording consisted of Guthrie Iddings on vocals, guitarist Barre Gambling, session guitarist Robert Daugherty, Egan O’ Rourke on bass, and drummer Jesse Haff. Iddings has since departed Daylight Dies and has been replaced by Nathan Ellis.
Even though Daylight Dies has two CDs available, their demo Idle and the album No Reply on Relapse, the five songs featured on the Live From… disc have been pulled from the No Reply release.
The first four songs, “The Line that Divides”, “I Wait”, “Hollow Hands”, and “Four Corners,” follow the same tracking order as No Reply with the track, “Everything that Belongs” concluding the disc.
As expected, Daylight Dies has a tight sound, but the death vocals from Iddings sound forced and just not natural when compared to others in the same style. Some vocalist have it, others don’t.
As for the instrumental portions of the disc, the music Daylight Dies creates soothes the soul.
There was some anticipation for the disc and Live From… is finally available to the public. The release can be obtained through http://www.relapse.com or the band’s official web site http://www.daylightdies.com.
If obtained through the band’s site, there’s the possibility of complimentary promotional items being sent with the order. It’s a bands way of being good to the fans that support them.
The release may be readily available at this time, but once the anticipated upcoming and untitled CD featuring Ellis is out, that may change. In other words, it would be a wise move not to wait.