Sun(rise) on fire - a "Dead By Sunrise" Fansite

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Las Vegas

New pictures from the Las Vegas gig, found them at LPTimes.

New Interview with Chester at Herald Sun

Herald Sun has a new interview with Chester about Dead by Sunrise.

Linkin Park's singer delves into the depths of his depravity with a side band, but Chester Bennington's finding things are very different when he's the one in charge.

Chester Bennington has a taste of power and it's making him nervous.
The Linkin Park singer has taken temporary leave from his multi-platinum safe haven to try his luck leading his own band, Dead By Sunrise.
And he's finding things are different when you're in charge.
"In Linkin Park I have a role I play - I come in, I hear music, I can say whether I like something or not, but I leave it up to the guys who play the instruments to do their thing and work through the motions of writing the music," Bennington says.
"Then, once they get something really dope, I do my job - I write some lyrics, I make melodies.
"In Dead By Sunrise, I'm really playing more of an all-round bandleader position, where I'm writing the songs, I'm dictating a lot of the style, but I'm letting everybody insert their opinions or give their feedback or do things the way they might think is cool. So it's really different for me to have my fingers in everybody's soup, so to speak."

But the position of bandleader doesn't sit all that easily with him.
"It makes me kinda nervous. If this doesn't do well, it's because my songs aren't good, because these are the songs I brought in. That's reality," he says.
"So that's a little frightening, to think that's a possibility. But I really feel like we've made a good record and so far the people who have heard it like it. Unless everybody's blowing smoke up my ass, which I hope they aren't."
Dead By Sunrise (or DBS as Bennington is already calling it, just as he calls his other band LP), has been a long time coming.
Bennington began working on a solo project in Linkin Park downtime in 2005.
By the time he was promoting that band's most recent album, 2007's Minutes to Midnight, Dead By Sunrise had a name and had become a band - the two integral cogs of which are former Orgy members Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh.
But it's taken until now to get Dead By Sunrise's album, Out of Ashes, out of the studio and out of storage.
"It feels like we've been working on this thing forever," Bennington says with just a little understatement.
Though there's no chance of hearing the band and not recognising it as the work of "that Linkin Park guy", it has its differences.
It's a far more straight-up rock proposition for a start. And though Bennington's lyrics in Linkin Park often need to tell a story in tandem with what the band's MC Mike Shinoda is writing about, in Dead By Sunrise Bennington was free to shovel his own dirt.
"People will get a little bit more of a personal glimpse into my life and maybe see the kind of songwriter I am," he says.
It's not about being honest for the first time - he's always done that.
"I've always been pretty up front, especially lyrically, with my music. I think that's the one real similarity between LP and Dead By Sunrise."
On this album, Bennington is a cathartic kind of songwriter. The band's name and the album's title refer to his descent into, and his eventual rise out of, a period in which he was doing - as he puts it in PC terms - a lot of partying.
He was self-destructing, he was addicted to booze and various other substances, and his first marriage was falling apart (he divorced in 2005).
"I've seen the devil in a smile, I've found salvation in a vial, my happy ending exists only in my dreams," Bennington sings on My Suffering.
"When I was going through it, I was actually trying to hide it - at least in my mind I was trying to hide it. I don't know if I did a very good job of hiding it," he says. "But I didn't want everyone to know how bad I'd really gotten. So a lot of the more revealing stuff was written afterwards, looking back, like 'OK, I'm cool with this now, I can handle being more open about my experiences over the past couple of years'.
"So that was really freeing for me. It was really interesting to look back and have that kind of perspective."
But some of the songs were written he says "while I was going through all the craziness . . . stuff that had nothing to do with that downfall, the downward spiral kind of thing".
Nowadays, of course, Bennington is happily remarried with a "litter of children".
The four kids in his house not so long ago became five - "One of my nieces moved in with us, which is pretty cool. So I guess I did acquire a 14-year-old girl somewhere along the line . . ."
It makes one wonder what his wife, Talinda, makes of all the darkness on Out of Ashes.
"At first it might have been a little disarming," Bennington says of his wife's reaction. "Like, 'Do you really want everybody to know all this stuff?'
"Honestly, what do I really have to hide?
If I can't be honest about what I'm experiencing and about my life, then what am I going to write about? Make up stuff?
If you do it tastefully and you do it in a way that's not like pornographic, if it doesn't come across as being dirty and kind of creepy, then I think that's OK."
But was it ever coming across as being dirty or creepy?
"No," Bennington says with a laugh. "I'm totally 100 per cent pure, never done anything wrong or weird in my life."
Though tearing out his heart in his Dead By Sunrise songs unburdened him, Bennington says it wasn't what saved him.
"The biggest epiphany for me during this period was realising how much value I had put into the stuff I had. That was the hardest part for me, discovering I had actually associated my success with the things I had accumulated, like money and cars and houses, things like that.
"When that's all gone, when that all disappeared, I kinda felt like maybe I was no longer successful, and I felt like a failure. And that was really tough to feel that way.
"That was really the beginning of the cascading downfall of my mental state for a little while. Then I got my s--- together and pulled myself out of it, with the help of my friends and my family and my beautiful wife."
These days, Bennington counts success as just living. "Success is if you can make it through life - you've figured something out, you know what I mean?" he says with a laugh.
"I'm still doing what I love to do, I get to be with my family as much as I want to be, I get to work whenever I feel like working, and I get to stop working when I'm over it.
"I don't have to get up and go to a job I hate every day, like a lot of people have to do to pay the bills. So I'm totally fine with that."
His other job, Linkin Park, is still simmering away in the background.
They've already been writing for a follow up to Minutes to Midnight, and their singer is more than positive about its direction. "We're always trying to do something that's different from what we've done before, and now we finally have the balls to do it," Bennington says.
"We're in a place where we're writing a lot and a lot of it's really good."
But it's unclear when any of that new Linkin Park music will emerge and Bennington will have to put Dead By Sunrise on the shelf.
"Get back to me in a year and I'll let you know how this is all working out," he says.
"I'm just starting to put all this stuff together and figure out how I can work on Linkin Park and tour with Dead By Sunrise and manage to be home enough to spend time with my kids so they don't feel like I'm a big jerk who always leaves the house."
His Linkin Park mate Shinoda at least has some wisdom to pass on, having been through this side-project thing himself with his hip hop-flavoured Fort Minor album The Rising Tied in 2005 (while Bennington was using the downtime to, ahem, party).
It wasn't a bad album, but it didn't do big business. So Shinoda has helped Bennington temper any grand expectations.
"He's given me a lot of good advice," Bennington says. "Don't go out there expecting to be treated like you're Linkin Park, which I think a lot of the guys in the band may assume - 'We're gonna go out there and have another project and it's gonna be HUGE!'
"I appreciate that. Mike is one of the coolest people I've ever known. He's one of my best friends. I love him to death, he's an amazing guy, super-talented, so anything he tells me, I pretty much listen to."
So what are Bennington's expectations for Dead By Sunrise?
"It just became this thing that is something pretty special for me. So all I really care about is that people, when they get the album, that they like the album from beginning to end," he says.

Dead By Sunrise Listening Parties in the UK

There will be a number of Dead By Sunrise listening parties throughout the UK this weekend! Fans will be able to listen to the album, and also have the chance to win some DBS shirts! Times and locations are below:

Friday, Oct 16 - Sheffield, Drop @ The Corporation (from 9.30pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Newcastle, Legends (from 9.00pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - London, Chinese Karaoke Bar St Moritz (from 10.00pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Birmingham, The Academy (from 9.30pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Nottingham, Rock City (from 9.00pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Manchester, Jilly’s (from 9.00pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Liverpool, Krazy House (from 9.00pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Glasgow, The Cathouse (from 10.30pm)
Saturday, Oct 17 - Glasgow, Voodoo @ The Cathouse (from 5.00pm) - Under 18’s

If you can’t make it out to one of these events, UK fans can still pick up some Dead By Sunrise merch HERE!

And I also added screencaps of the Letterman gig, you can find them here!

Out of Ashes Release Day

We posted this little video from Chester right before their gig at the Letterman show.
I just wanted to let you know that I added some nice screencaps of it on the Sun(rise) on Fire gallery, thank you very much for making them to Chester-land.

If you watch the video closely you can sneak into his shirt and look at his new Tattoo ;)

Friday, October 16, 2009

Upcoming LPlive Interview/Winkin Park Update

There's going to be another interview by LPLive! They're planning on doing an interview with the art director of OOA's art work. And they are asking you to post your questions! :D
To do that, I think you have to register to their message board which I think is worth it (thinking of what a great site LPLive is).

I promised to keep you up-to-date about Winkin Park. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here a quick explanation:
Winkin Park is a Linkin Park Wikipedia done by fans and it only contains stuff about Linkin Park and LP-related things. Everyone can help by writing articles, correcting them or adding facts.
We're in contact with the owner of the LPWikipedia, so he informed us about changes to the site. The latest change is the English version of Winkin Park. And therefore, he needs contributors. If you're interested, you can either contact the webmaster or tell us (by commenting) that you want to help him out and we'll let him know about it.

Beautiful Scans of Sonic Seducer Magazine

Sandra from our partner site made some nice scans of the article on DBS in the latest issue of a german music magazine called Sonic Seducer. There's this article in that issue and a (kind of weird and ugly) poster of Chester. Don't get me wrong, the picture is nice but the background is weird. ;) And DBS is on the cover of the magazine. Go and get it if you're able to, it's out now!

Here are the scans; all credit goes to Sandra! ;)

I will post a translation later ;)

Source: Rob and Chester Fansite

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

At Music for Relief with Team Shinoda and Team Phoenix

As you know we're also supporting Music for Relief so I want to post this cute message from Mike Shinoda and Phoenix.

Find more videos like this on Music For Relief

Someone else who's "working" for Music for Relief is Mike's wife Anna... so I'll post her last Journal entry here too.

I just spent another awesome Saturday morning planting trees with TreePeople: an environmental nonprofit organization here in Los Angeles. I love gardening and occasionally volunteering with TreePeople gives me a great opportunity to get my hands dirty while adding some much needed trees all over Los Angeles County. This morning we planted 35 trees in a park in Sun Valley. The trees were planted near an field area that is used for sports. Although small now (around 6 feet tall, with skinny trunks and boney sticks as branches) eventually they will be towering with thick, leafy canopies! I love to imagine how children and adults will enjoy the shade and beauty that these trees will bring to their park.

Next Saturday, October 17th, from 9am- 1pm, Music for Relief will be teaming up with TreePeople to reforest an area of Sylmar that was devastated by the 2008 wildfires. If you are in the Los Angeles area and would like to come plant with Music for Relief, register online at http://www.treepeople.org/million-trees-la-park-planting-0

Dead by Sunrise @ Letterman

We already posted that JoeHahn.org has some awesome pictures from the guys at Letterman and now I want to post you the performance, so here you go :)

We also got some great pictures from the Las Vegas show from Melissa, thank you again, girl ;)

I also got another interview from Ryanne where Chester talked about "Out of Ashes"
Im posting it here without any further words.
Found it at 102.1 the Edge.

The debut album from Dead By Sunrise, called Out Of Ashes, features some of the most personal lyrics ever written by singer Chester Bennington. A number of the songs were inspired by Bennington's struggles with his own psychological demons as well as drugs and alcohol. Bennington told us that his addiction to alcohol reached its peak after a divorce from his first wife left him emotionally and financially drained: "I lived on alcohol. It was either beer, or Jack and Coke, or Jack Daniels in a pint glass with ice. And then it got to the point where my wife said to me about seven months after we got together, she goes, 'I don't think there's been a day since I've known you that you haven't drank.' And I was like, 'What are you talking about? That's crazy' -- as I'm drinking a Jack and Coke. That was where my life went."

Bennington told us that during the divorce proceedings, he went from living in a mansion to a 700-square-foot apartment, and that all his money was wiped out.

Out Of Ashes was released on Tuesday (October 13th) and features the single "Crawl Back In."

Dead By Sunrise will play at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City on Wednesday night (October 14th), and the Roxy in Los Angeles on October 19th.

Letterman/Show update/Review

The band was at last night's Letterman Show. There are some great pictures of it over at JoeHahn.org, and there's a video of Chester getting ready for the performance on the band's Facebook. You can download the video on LPTimes.

DBS will play at the Holiday Havoc 2009 on Dec 12. Get your tickets here to see them play at the Joint at Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas (pre-sale starts on Oct, 15 at 10 am).

Also, there's a pretty nice review by Jas on her site, LPTimes. It's an honest and great review, I recommend you to read it ;)

Another info on this site:

There'd be some difficulties browsing through this site and the gallery in the next couple of days. The server on which our gallery is hosted on currently, has problems, so we'll move this site to another one. Hopefully, we're done with it by next week, including a new look for Sunrise On Fire ;)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Interview with Chester at Aquarian

Sandra from R&CFansi posted this interview with Chester at Aquarian.

The record is so well rounded; you really get something new from it with each listen. The sense of darkness and deep disappear is immediately striking, but there’s also the pure rock elements, the anger, a few great love songs, and acceptance. What contributed to that, were the songs written over a long stretch of time and so you had all these emotions to draw from?

The record was written over a long period of time, because when we started the record it was late 2005 or mid-2005, so I started writing it then and we worked till end of the year. Then I started working on Minutes To Midnight. So I took the next three years off basically from working on the record [Out Of Ashes]. After that, I started picking it back up again after we finished touring for Minutes To Midnight.

I had a bunch of new songs, I wrote other new songs in the process of recording with Howard Benson. So there are phases of writing in different periods over the last four years. A lot had happened in that time, you can imagine, a lot of things have happened to yourself in four years, so there’s plenty of stuff to draw from. Some of these songs are about when I met my wife and fell in love with her. That’s where the love songs come from. At the same time, I was having tough times in the middle of a long, drawn out divorce that was draining and pretty much put me on a downward spiral just because it was so…there was so much going on during that period of time, that you get songs like ‘My Suffering’ and ‘Condemned,’ and the heavier, darker stuff was all derived from the phases of that experiences. But yeah, there was a lot going on.

Yeah, because an outsider looking in on you could say, ‘Oh, Chester is in Linkin Park, and he has Club Tattoo, his life must be a dream.’ So the depths of despair on the record are shocking.

My life is a dream, but unfortunately, I am an asshole sometimes. I can be very selfish or my perspectives can be off, but there were a lot of really stressful things that happening over that period of time. Like waking up one day and having a lot of money and a big house, and a year later, not having a single dime and living in a seven square foot apartment in Santa Monica. That can make you go, ‘Okay, none of this stuff is actually going to be here for very long.’ That freaked me out, and that spun me into a place of like drinking every day. Kind of like, ‘How did this happen? All I did was not want to be married anymore and now, I have nothing.’

It was kind of crazy, but the thing that kept me going through the whole process was that I did fall in love again. I did find myself, because I knew that I had a lot to live for. Like you were saying, I do have this really blessed life. I do have Linkin Park, I do have Club Tattoo, I have a beautiful wife and a beautiful family, and all this great stuff. I put too much focus on the materialist things in life like money and houses. Yeah, families, everybody has got one and some suck, I kind of have a mixture of both, but I really consciously understand how much value I had placed on things that didn’t really matter. It was pretty tough and that’s what the record was inspired from. It was a combination of all those things.

Hence the title?

Right (laughs). I torched the life I had and started a new one.

How did you meet up with the guys in the band?

Well, Ryan, Amir and myself have been friends for ten years or maybe more. We met when Orgy was on its second record, Vapor Transmission, we [Linkin Park] were recording Hybrid Theory. We were working in studio called NRG, and there are multiple studios that bands can work in, and Ryan heard me screaming some parts I was working on for the record. He came walking down the hall and was like, ‘Who are you? And what are you doing here?’

He was very funny, and I told him who I was and honestly, like an hour later, we were best friends. We’ve spoken at least once a week since then. So when I was writing songs, after Meteora was finished, Ryan had heard me play some of these songs, and he kind of gave me the push to convince Linkin Park that they weren’t Linkin Park songs, which obviously they aren’t or do something else with them. I thought about that, he didn’t say, ‘with me,’ he said, ‘with them.’ It was going to be my solo album, and I was going to do pretty much everything that I could with the exception of play drums, and it very quickly turned into Ryan and Amir asking if they could manipulate the song structures or maybe playing things a little different. I just gave them full reign, ‘You guys can do whatever you want to the songs.’ That’s kind of how it started, and I knew the rest of the guys in the band from them being in Julien-K. The other half of the band, they are engineers or producers, so they are all working behind the scenes, most of them and we came together through friendship.
A few years ago, on a Family Values tour you did a duet with Scott Weiland and you easily went toe to toe with him. I realized that you weren’t only a great vocalist, but you’re a great singer. That’s really evident on this record, because you can really hear your range.

In Linkin Park, the thought process is like me and Mike share half percent of everything, so if I am doing stuff that only I could do in the band, then it kind of restricts us. No one else in Linkin Park is a vocalist, so we can’t do three part harmonies or anything like that.

Whereas in Dead By Sunrise, I have Ryan, I have Brandon, Elias, and they have all been singers in other bands before, so I have a pretty good arsenal who can do three part harmonies with me. Also this is probably the real truth, Howard Benson is just like, ‘I don’t give a fuck. This is your record, so we are just going to do it. People want to hear you sing.’ So he really kind of pushed the envelope in a lot of ways. It wasn’t just singing a harmony to a part, it was singing a harmony and then doing harmonies to harmonies which separate sections that cross in different ways and layering those. It was very complicated—it was the most layering I have ever done on any record. I think that it’s something that will really set it part from sounding like a Linkin Park record.

What was the song selection process like? For instance, ‘Morning After,’ which is also a great song isn’t not on the record?

That was done, because I already released ‘Morning After’ on the Underworld soundtrack. I felt that if I put that on the record, it would kind of be cheating. So we basically took some songs that didn’t quite make the cut, and we’re reissuing, because the version that is on Underworld II is kind of a remix, it has some guitars taken out, and a more danceable beat to kind of fit the mode of the soundtrack a little more. This is more of a direct, straight rock version, and I believe that is actually going to be on the record if you get it as an import from Japan or some parts of Europe. So if people want that on the Dead By Sunrise record, [there’s] that, and we did a cover of the Misfits’ ‘20 Eyes’ like as extras.

Why that song in particular?

Well, I actually started playing that song when I was in a cover band called Bucket of Winnies for a little while. I play it with Bucket of Winnies and Camp Freddy sometimes, it’s just fun to go play with a bunch of guys and play cover songs. So we started playing ‘20 Eyes,’ we recorded it and we really liked it. There’s nothing we’ll ever be able to do with it, so we thought that this was kind of good way of letting people have it.

You’re playing the MTV Halloween gala, is that the launch of a huge tour?

We’ve actually kind of gone back and fourth a little bit on how we wanted to approach touring. I was thinking festivals, maybe a couple of touring bands, and then I felt like I don’t want to do that. Maybe next year after the band has been around for awhile we could do that, but I really want to go play for people. Have their faces really close and loud and sweaty and right in people’s faces, and have them see the band in that way at first. I really want to build fans in a more grassroots way, not just because I’m in Linkin Park [and] the other guys have been in Orgy that we deserve to go play these amazing tours. I think we really need to earn our place. The goal is to go out and get people to fall in love with the band the old fashioned way.

Are you especially eager to do that, because it seems with Linkin Park, you guys just skyrocketed to the top?

I just feel like it’s the right thing to do. I feel like I don’t want to take Linkin Park fans for granted, and I know that the other guys don’t want to take Orgy fans for granted. I feel like hopefully, they will like this music that we’re doing, but those are fans of those respective bands, and we can’t just like leech off that.

It really feels like the right thing to do, and I actually if there is anyone else in the band who put in a little more time before things took off for Linkin Park, I have been doing this since I was fourteen. I made my first record when I was 16-years-old. I was in a band [Grey Daze] for seven years before I was in Linkin Park. We played with hundreds of national acts, and by the time we were finished and broke up, we were drawing anywhere from 1000-2000 people every one to two weeks.

That’s a pretty big deal for a band that’s never going to go anywhere. That was frustrating to me, so I feel like I have paid my dues. I don’t feel like I need to go out there and prove that, but I do think that it’s important not to just be like, ‘Oh, I am in my famous band, I can go play arenas,’ that’s ridiculous. ‘Or I deserve to have this great support slot just because I am Chester.’ It doesn’t make much sense to me.

Getting to the actual songs on the record, ‘Fire’ sounds like an open letter to someone who has passed.

That song took a few different lyrical changes. It started out one way that was really like a sad story using interesting metaphors and that’s where the name ‘Fire’ came from. The lyric that inspired the title was, ‘There’s a fire in our hearts that’s the reason why the tears keep falling, to put out the fires that our hearts are starting.’ That’s where it came from, [but] the melodies didn’t quite seem to fit. So I started over, and kind of just ran with that, and went with a more spiritual path of getting through the tougher times.
Some people may look at that song and just say, ‘Oh he must have wrote that about someone who passed on.’ Or, ‘Wow that’s really sad.’ Or some people may see it as a spiritual thing, looking up at the heavens, and you know that there is something greater than yourself that’s with you all the time. This is probably one of those songs that is written with a Linkin Park sort of a touch, because it’s more open in general.

Songs like ‘Condemned’ and songs like ‘Inside of Me’ are pretty straightforward—there is no question as to what those songs are about. This one the fact that it can be seen in so many different ways is what makes it special, and I think that’s what going to give it the ability to connect with people in a much deeper way then perhaps other songs on the record. Oh, and by the way, ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I wrote that song for my wife for our wedding.

That’s my favorite song on the record.

That’s my favorite song on the record as well. That one and ‘In The Darkness,’ those are my two favorite songs. Those are both written with love about the relationship I have with my beautiful wife. So I wrote that for her, and we danced to that at our wedding.

How did you meet?
We met through a friend, and we never actually crossed paths. Ryan was friends with her for many years. Almost for as long as I have [been friends with him], and we had known of each other for the same amount of time, but I have never met her for some reason. If she was at a party, I didn’t make it. We had never met and eventually, after I had split up with my ex-wife, we met at a party.
We hit it off right away, like instantly. Ever since we met—I think it was like four or five days before we’d see each other again, and we have been together ever since. I think she moved in with me about a week-and-half after I met her. We met, and that was it.

Update around Sun(rise) on Fire

Okay, I guess we're back up to date now. If I missed anything, just let me know ;)
Uhm, we had our little project "Tell us you story", on until 7th october and we're still working. So don't be mad of disapointed... the story's will be up here soon.

We're also closing the poll for the board. Sun(rise) on Fire will have a Forum. We just want to test it at first and than we'll see how it'll work out ;)

Love,

Tensh_iie

New LPTV Episode with...

Chester reording vocals for "Inside of me"

I also got this nice picture for the awesome freaksoldier on Twitter, one of her friends made it as they visited Berlin. BUT.... why the heck is he alone on the poster? Where's Ryan and where's Amir?

Dead by Sunrise at TV Total Stockcar Race, Germany

I found some great videos from the guys at TV Total in Germany, at Julien-K Germany. Thank you guys.

Right before peforming "Crawl back in"

Performing "Crawl back in"

After performing "Crawl back in"

Dead by Sunrise watching "Raab in danger"

OC Register Interview with....

... Ryan Shuck.

At this point, with only a single in rotation on KROQ and an album still a week away from being released, some might be inclined to write off Dead by Sunrise as nothing more than a side project from Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington.
It's an impression further deepened by the group's debut at the end of August before a Southern California audience of more than 30,000, when, in the middle of Linkin Park's set at the first Epicenter festival in Pomona, DBS unveiled a handful of songs.
"While we were playing," remembers Ryan Shuck, the band's guitarist, "people were yelling 'TOOL!' It was one of the hardest shows … but we didn't expect it to be easy. Between all of us (in the band) we've sold 57 million records, and we didn't get there by going in front of a bunch of people and expecting not to have to fight for it."
What some might not realize, however, is that this band has been almost decade in the making. At the turn of the millennium, when Linkin Park was first breaking big, Bennington met Shuck and Amir Derakh, who were also enjoying success with their band Orgy, riding high off their rocked-out version of New Order's "Blue Monday."
Though the trio soon went different directions professionally – Linkin Park quickly became one of the biggest rock acts of the era, while Orgy disbanded in 2004, leading Shuck and Derakh to form a new band, Julien-K – they stayed in touch, often getting together in their time off for barbecues and to mess around with music.
These days, Bennington shares his time between Newport Beach and Phoenix. Shuck and Derakh now live in Long Beach but got their start in Orange County; Shuck owns a couple of local restaurants, Lola Gaspar in Santa Ana and Gypsy Den in Costa Mesa.
While at a get-together five years ago, Bennington pulled out a guitar and started playing some songs he had written that didn't fit the Linkin Park mold. Shuck says he immediately heard potential in the songs and wanted to help Bennington put them on record. The guys had always said they should play together – this seemed like a good start. Already Bennington was considered the unofficial fifth member of Julien-K, given how often he would stop by the studio to offer pointers.
So Shuck and Derakh were excited when one day Bennington asked them to return the favor, handing them a disc with new guitar parts and vocals to see what they might add. The result of their three days of tinkering ultimately became the basis of Dead by Sunrise. The duo soon brought in Julien-K bassist Brandon Belsky and drummer Elias Andra, later adding keyboardist Anthony "Fu" Valcic to the project.
"It's really incestuous and extremely complicated in the way that it all pencils out," Shuck says of the lineup. "The 'Reader's Digest' version is that we were all just really good friends who play music together … and create all sorts of different sounds."
"Out of Ashes," the band's Warner Bros. debut, drops Oct. 13. The following Monday DBS plays to its hometown crowd at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood.
"I'm totally excited," Shuck says, "because we've been working on this for, like, five years. We've finally found a window (of time) to get this record out. We feel like we've been carrying a baby for five years and now it's finally being born."
Although all pre-production was done by the band in Shuck's home studio in Long Beach, big-time producer Howard Benson – noted for his diverse work, ranging from Motörhead and Papa Roach to Kelly Clarkson and Daughtry – was called on to polish the record.
"It could have probably been released the way it was," Shuck figures, "but when you work with someone like Howard, he's going to sit there and take an objective look at it. He's going to dig into things that matter, zero in on them – make it into something that really pays off. … This project deserved that sort of respect after all of the sacrifice and dedication that went into working on it."
As to what critics might think of Dead by Sunrise – or whether people will take the group seriously or bet on it fading away – Shuck says they're all out of their heads.
"This is a real band and it's going to be something that stays around," he insists. "We're not going to just go away – and no, it's not cutting into Linkin Park time. We're looking at it as bringing people double the Chester."

Source: LPTimes

Ryan and Chester @ QuiM in Paris

Here are two videos, one is from QuiFM in Paris and the other one... I don't know to be honest. Seems like some Fans met them and they gave a short "Interview", pretty nice :)

QuiFM

Fan "Interview"

Interview at german radio + BBC

We also got a mail from our beloved Matt again, and he send us a interview with Ryan and Chester, in german but you can listen to some things they said during the interview ;)

(click on the picture to get to the interview)

Other than that he also send us a nice picture of Ryan, Amir and Chester from the BBC :) Thank you. And Amir himself posted a picture from the BBC recording as well :)