Above the packed floor of Camden’s Electric Ballroom, upstairs in a half decorated dressing room on a flaking leather sofa, sits Dead Posey’s lead vocalist Danyell Souza, and multi-instrumentalist and former Eve 6 member Tony Fagenson. Having only released their first EP in 2018, Freak Show, the band’s music has already been heavily featured in mainstream TV shows Lucifer, Teen Wolf, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, as well as the video game League of Legends. The bands sludgy blues sound and supernatural surrealistic lyrics could act as the soundtrack to the Salem witch trials as they come towards the end of their UK tour as the support for Canadian rockers Theory of a Deadman.
Danyell: So far so good, it’s almost over already. I feel like you just get your sea legs within the first week, so it’s hard to only do a week tour as you just get started.
Tony: We could do this for another two months.
D: Theory have been amazing, they’re great people.
T: It’s been really fun coming over from the States, we played a couple UK shows back in May; The Great Escape, smaller club shows, whereas this is bigger venues, and really full crowds. It’s pretty wild coming here two times within the last 6 months. We’ve got Download Festival in June 2020, it’s a nice schedule we’re on.
D: We’re hoping we can get some kind of tour around the same time as Download Festival, so it would be good to have some shows before and after that to make it a thing.
Having only released songs via the Internet and skipped out the whole touring stage, do you find people already know your songs when they see you?
D: On our first tour last year some people were singing our songs and they’d never seen us live before, these days a lot more people hear you first and then see you, they get a lot more excited.
T: That’s a good thing about being able to put music out these days, it can really reach a lot of people if the right things happen, and you don’t even have to play any shows. Shows are very important now that we’ve been doing it a bunch on the road, but it’s nice to have some of the music spread around via the TV shows that used our music; it’s a great way to introduce us.
Have you watched any of the shows your music has been featured in?
T: Not exactly, but we’ve meant to.
D: We watched our song’s episode and they seem like good shows!
T: In this day there are so many shows, we have a queue that’s about three miles long, and those shows are on them.
D: We’ll get there one of these days.
You’re in the process of your second EP, how’s that going?
T: We’re nearing the completion of it, songs are written and all the core stuff is recorded, so now we’re tweaking and mixing.
D: Now it’s the label approving everything so we can officially put it out. We’re looking at early 2020. There are a lot more electronic elements to it, a few Depeche Mode influences on it, still got the same lyric tone.
T: Still fuzzy guitars and the Dead Posey thing.
D: The light and the dark elements of our minds, we added a few more extra things with the Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails vibe a little bit, but keeping with our vibe still.
T: Lyrically too Danyell’s been pushed even further, it’s been an amazing ride with Dead Posey, and with any bands there’s been frustrations and things changing. She tapped into that with the lyrics, infusing a little bit of piss and vinegar into the songs.
D: When you’re on a label they also have to approve what can come out and what can’t. We had four other songs at the beginning of this year that we scrapped three of, and re-did one that’ll be on the EP.
T: We’d written some of those a long time ago just before we got into touring and really getting the band going, and we ended up having more to say now. We set them aside, maybe they’ll resurface in some other shape or form later, but we just ended up being hungry to write all new stuff.
D: We’re happy with where it’s at, and that the children we are putting out into the world are the right ones.
What attracts to the supernatural and the occult?
D: It’s life. As humans, we’re only here for a certain amount of time, our days are numbered, and we have no idea when we will pass on to the great unknown. We can all go down rabbit holes sometimes with certain things making us depressed, the lyric elements come from those places. Both me and Tony want people to make it their own, it means something to us, but we like people to interpret the song how they see fit.
T: We like taking from a real place with real emotion with something and using a bit of heightened imagery to give it that Posey spin.
D: As far as the aesthetic side of it goes there’s a lot of surrealism art that we enjoy like Salvador Dali and Edgar Allen Poe.
T: Filtered through real life experiences.
D: Whenever you touch on the dark side people automatically think you’re doing witch stuff or you’re obsessed with horror movies. I don’t call myself a witch but because of our aesthetic people just assume.
When you’re in that dark minded place, how do you get yourself out?
D: Meditation, long drives blaring music, crying sometimes. Tony telling me it’s going to be all good, life is going to be just fine! He’s my anchor, I tend to be the wild card falling into rabbit hole after rabbit hole, and he says ‘okay rabbit, get out of there, let’s go find the sun again.’ As my best friend I feel it’s really important to have that support system.
T: It’s a tough world and a tough business. We’re able to just talk about anything that’s bugging us, and sometimes it turns into a song.
D: On the contrary, there are times where we’re not on the same page which also helps because it’s black and white and we end up meeting in the middle somehow. In terms of going down rabbit holes, remember there’s another day until there’s not, keep on trucking.
T: Give it a few hours and really thinking of all the different ways to look at something.
D: Writing your feelings down is amazing, helps a lot.
When you’re on a hectic tour schedule, what do you do in your down time?
T: Most of our tours have no down time at all, yesterday we had a day off in Nottingham.
D: I’m up by noon, but I’m also up until 3-4 in the morning as I’m a night owl. By the time I’m up
Tony’s already done stuff in the studio that I can’t.
T: When we’re back home we have basic rituals that we do as life is so chaotic being in a
band.
D: We’re only back for a few days and then we go on another tour with a band called Through Fire.
T: At home it’s very civil things, there’s a certain place we like to go to for breakfast, the simple stuff.
D: I’m a Wall-E, I like to have everything put in its right place, a clean freak. I do my sage. On the road
when we get into our hotels at night I’ll have a few candles with my rocks set up.
Are you looking forward to seeing any other acts at Download Festival 2020?
T: KISS, Deftones, Theory. When you’re at these festivals everyone’s good intentions are to go and see as many bands as you possibly can, we just did a couple in the States and we barely got to see anyone as you’re whisked around to do interviews.
Release date for new EP?
T: First month or two in 2020. It’s mostly done, we’re just doing some tweaks now, don’t know if the label will want to do a single first, but you’ll definitely start hearing some stuff pretty soon. Hopefully a full length album in 2020 too.
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