And Now Presenting The Return of Drop Dead, Gorgeous

Drop Dead, Gorgeous 2024

And Now Presenting The Return of Drop Dead, Gorgeous

Drop Dead, Gorgeous has returned! The much-revered metalcore band released four solid full-length albums – two on Rise Records and two on Suretone. The band played all across the world including major festivals such as the Vans Warped Tour and A Taste of Chaos Australia. From 2004-2011, they set the music scene on fire, exploding into the lives and soundtracks of a generation of music fans. After calling it quits, drummer Danny Cooper and lead vocalist Daniel “Stills” Stillman would do Bleach Blonde and 888 together. And then there was silence. But a recent surprise post on Instagram would change all that – as Drop Dead, Gorgeous has announced a comeback show December 28th in their hometown of Denver at The Summit! Right after the announcement, Highwire Daze caught up with Cooper and Stills to find out more about this relaunch of Drop Dead, Gorgeous.

We’re here with Danny Cooper and Stills from Drop Dead, Gorgeous who are now back. At what point did you decide now was the time to do a Drop Dead, Gorgeous reunion show?
Danny Cooper: We’ve received many messages and, even offers from promoters trying to get us to do a show. We’ve just been busy with life and being adults. It just felt like we were at a point where we could all put in the time to put on a good show and just kind of felt right.

And who is currently in Drop Dead, Gorgeous?
Danny: Yes. So, Stills, myself Cooper, Jake Hansen and we have 2 friends playing guitar as well. That would be Jacob Belcher and River Wilde for the live show.

Will there be any new Drop Dead, Gorgeous music or touring?
Danny: So, we have future plans. Yes, we do have new Drop Dead songs but we can’t go into too much on the specifics, yet. It’s still a lot behind the scenes getting worked on, but yeah, we do have some ambitious goals for the future.

So Stills, how do you feel about all of this, starting Drop Dead, Gorgeous again?
Stills: It’s definitely exciting. It’s been quite a long time, like 15 years since we played a show. All this time away from Drop Dead playing different types of music and everything has made me really eager to step back into the heavy genre again. It’s making me appreciate heavy music all over again which is really fun, honestly like when I was 16 years old all over again.

Let’s go back to the beginning. When you look back on the first 2 Rise Records releases, what do you think of them now in retrospect?
Stills: If we’re talking about Be Mine and In Vogue, I’ve definitely listened to them a lot lately. I’m relearning a lot of them because we’re going to be playing a show again. Be Mine is really interesting because it’s just pure raw madness compared to when we got into The Hot N’ Heavy. It was still some madness and chaos but a little bit more refined and controlled. Be Mine is just so raw and honestly almost sounds like a punk rock feel. We’re all super young. We didn’t have a lot of time to record it, so me being as old as I am now listening to it like, “Wow, this is kind of wild. This is super raw. I can kind of see why people enjoyed it live back then because it was just kind of off the wall.’

Then In Vogue, we had more time to record it. I think it progressed a little bit as a band. It’s also very interesting listening to it now because I probably didn’t listen to it for almost 10 years. So, listening to it now compared to what’s coming out now too is definitely interesting. There’s definitely a very big difference to what songs sound like nowadays in the genre to what In Vogue sounded like back then and it’s like a time warp. It’s kind of crazy.

The two Suretone releases, when you look back on those in that time in the Drop Dead, Gorgeous history, what do you think of them now in retrospect?
Stills: Worse Than A Fairytale and The Hot N’ Heavy. I think we are at a very different place during the recording of each of them and it is very crazy to listen to it now. Worse Than A Fairytale, we kind of went on a major sonic exploration on that record. It was a concept album we really tried to like dig deep into our musicianship. Overall, we tried to display as much emotion as we could possibly display on that record and went to great lengths to make sure that was accomplished. Make sure it was recorded really raw in specific ways, and I recorded the vocals in a closet through a vintage 1950 microphone, just a lot of cool interesting things like that.

Then The Hot N’ Heavy we were like, “Let’s make this kind of a combination of In Vogue and Worse Than A Fairytale. Let’s take what we liked of both records and kind of combine it into one thing. Instead of making it raw, let’s make it more polished.” I think we were just really focused on The Hot N’ Heavy, we were very in tune with everything musically and we had enough time to really fine-tune everything. The atmosphere in Atlanta is a lot different than Venice Beach if you could imagine. We were more focused, I would say, on the The Hot N’ Heavy whereas Worse Than A Fairytale, we were all younger and were kind of living up the dream and it can be distracting. Living in that area can eat you alive so, I think we learned a lot, just life experiences doing Worse Than a Fairytale and I think it also reflected on the record itself – because we were all just swimming between exploring different styles of music and different things in life all the same time – and it culminated to make what Worse Than a Fairytale is, which is a very unique thing that we could honestly probably never recreate.

Daniel “Stills” Stillman of Drop Dead, Gorgeous

Around this time, I believe you toured with Watchout! There’s Ghosts and Jordan Blake. What was that experience like?
Danny: To be honest with you, a lot of those days are a blur. Ever since the beginning of the band, it all happened so quickly over a short span. We were just flying by the seat of our pants for most of it. We toured many years, the majority of the year on the road. So just very thankful for all those experiences, it was a wild time.

Stills: Yeah. Jordan was definitely a wild one for sure. He was such a sweet dude, and he was super positive. You could just tell he was having the time of his life. He was really enjoying making music which is really awesome because that’s not always the case on tour. We all love making music but sometimes you were tired or were just out of energy – but he had a ton of energy and was a beacon of light. He loved being on tour. I just remember him being super fun to hang out with.

Since we’re on a kind of a sad part of the interview, let’s just talk about Kyle Browning. Wikipedia says that he passed away is that correct?
Danny: Yeah, he passed away a few years back. It was a really unfortunate and heartbreaking accident for us and those who loved him. His presence is greatly missed for sure in all of our everyday lives and certainly in Drop Dead as well.

In approximately 2009, why did Drop Dead, Gorgeous decide to call it quits? Correct me if the year is wrong, by the way.
Danny: Somewhere around there. Your guess is as good as mine honestly. It wasn’t really a specific thing. Like I said, from the beginning of the band we were thrown into it and it was non-stop touring, or writing, or recording records. By around that time I think we were all just a little burnt out. We had missed a lot back home like many musicians do and just wanted to take a step back collectively and focus on things at home and see what else life had to offer at that time.

Bleach Blonde started probably like 2 years after Drop Dead, Gorgeous ended. Looking back on Bleach Blonde, what do you think of that band now in retrospect?
Stills: That was a fun record, and it was our first stab at something that was more alternative. There wasn’t any screaming or anything so, it was a fun experience to try something completely different than what we had done in the past. We got to record with Kris Crummett which was also fun, because he did In Vogue, so, it was fun to reunite with him and explore a different genre of music. We did some limited touring and everything and it was similar to Drop Dead. We just stopped touring, decided we wanted to stay at home and be around family and everything, and just explore some other musical directions.

Danny Cooper of Drop Dead, Gorgeous

Bleach Blonde only had the 1 EP and album, and then there was no more Bleach Blonde. What did you guys do after Bleach Blonde ended? What other bands or projects were you involved with?
Danny: Stills and I together did, after Bleach Blonde, a project called 888 that we had some success with, and toured for a few years on that project as well. Then after that ended, like a lot of musical projects, just got the down time and then you get that itch again and decide you want to do something. This time around that turned out to be Drop Dead.

What could one expect from the live Drop Dead, Gorgeous show in December?
Danny: We’ve been working real hard for many months already. We knew it would be a big undertaking to try and coordinate and put on a live show after so many years. We’re going to go all out for it for sure. We’re playing songs off every record and we’re really going to try to make it, hopefully, the best Drop Dead show that we’ve ever played.

Do you have any messages for Drop Dead, Gorgeous fans who are reading this right now and going, “Oh my God, you guys are back!”
Danny: Thank you for still being here. I think that it’s pretty wild that people still care about these silly songs we wrote when we were kids. We have a lot of cool things planned for the future so, I hope everybody sticks around.

Stills: It’s pretty touching that people still listen to these songs – and not only listen to them but some people really care about them a lot. We’re very thankful for that. These songs mean a ton to us, all of our collective albums, and the fact that it means something to somebody else is just incredible to us.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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