PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The forthcoming album of DED isn’t just a release. It’s a rebirth.
RESENT, set to drop on Sept. 19, was crafted over the past three years — a time that saw much trial and tribulation for this Arizona-based nu metal band. Comprised of Joe Cotela (vocals), Alex Adamcik (guitar), Kyle Koelsch (bass) and Matt Reinhard (drums), DED stepped away from the spotlight after 2021’s School of Thought due to business setbacks happening behind the scenes.
Quietly, at their self-built Trash Island Studios, the guys penned a surplus of tracks that felt like a return to their roots. Drawing from all of their favorite genres, from hardcore to electronic and everything in between, RESENT channels the early spirit of DED in a fresh way, serving as a celebration of the heavy music that they love. In fact, Cotela described RESENT as DED‘s most “unfiltered” work to date.
Ahead of the release, PopHorror caught up with Cotela, who sees RESENT as DED‘s reintroduction to the world. He discussed the pure joy experienced by the band while forging this record, the killer collaboration with Chris Motionless on “Until I Die,” the excitement of hitting the road with In This Moment and Dayseeker on the Black Mass tour starting Sept. 18 (plus a performance at Louder Than Life on Sept. 19) and more.
PopHorror: DED‘s new album RESENT comes out Sept. 19. How are you feeling as you get ready to unleash this new music to the world?
Joe Cotela: I feel great about it. It’s been a while since we put out a record, put out new music, and we worked long and hard on it. I’m really proud of it. We made it really just for ourselves in a lot of ways. I think the last record, we tried to write a little bit more with the intention of writing big songs that would resonate with a lot of people. This is kind of reverting back to the beginning of making music when you just made it for yourself because it made you happy, and I think that’s what we did on our first record. So yeah, I’m really proud of it. I just love it. It’s like making a meal. I try to equate it to that. We put all the ingredients that we like and it tastes really good to us. I listened to it and it’s music that I would love to hear if it wasn’t my band.
PopHorror: This time around, you guys had your own recording studio and pretty much did everything — from engineering to producing — on you own. What was that process like?
Joe Cotela: It was amazing. Over the past couple of years, the rest of my band started building a studio in Phoenix called Trash Island Studios. It was great. The first couple records that we did, we had always done it ourselves maybe in someone’s house or whatever, demoing, and then we’d go into a big studio. But this time, we just did it ourselves with the intention of maybe having them be just demos. But then as we went on, we were like, “You know, these sound really great. Let’s get these mixed.” So we got to mix with our buddy Zach Jones and KJ Strock did some of the mixing on it. We did it ourselves, which ended up being a really cool thing.
I think what it really does is it gives the most unfiltered version of what the band would be. There’s no producers. Maybe they would have made it better, who knows? But for us, we felt like it was strong and it was an expression straight from us, and to have the capabilities to do that now was really cool. So we were just like, “Let’s roll with it this time and produce it ourselves.”
PopHorror: These songs were written over the span of several years, with DED going fairly quiet during that time. Did you have any fans reaching out wondering where you went?
Joe Cotela: Yeah, a lot of that. We went through a whole thing behind the scenes, music industry nightmare type stuff that people talk about. But during that whole time, we were kind of locked up. We couldn’t really do a lot. We couldn’t release music, couldn’t really get touring going. So we just wrote music. We had so many songs and we still have a lot of songs that didn’t make this record that I really hope we release someday, which I think we plan to do. We’re already thinking about a deluxe edition. And nowadays, you release music and the model’s a little bit more quantity over quality anyway, just put everything you have, just dump it on us, let’s take it. Not that that’s the case with the music, but we’ll probably be releasing a lot of the songs that didn’t make the record as singles, I’m sure, which would be awesome.
PopHorror: Was it hard to narrow down the songs to the 12 that made it on RESENT? What made these songs the ones that made you go, “I need people to hear these first?”
Joe Cotela: Well, we fought over that a lot. Each of us have different versions of that. But we all feel good about what we ended up on. I don’t know what made them feel different. It’s like you look for this kind of internal feeling, the song really hits me. And if it hits me, then we’re all made up of the same thing, and those vibrations or frequencies are going to enter people. Maybe the lyric is right and I feel like that’s going to resonate with people. And really what we thought about was, “This resonates with us. This feels really good to me. So if it feels good to me, then it’ll probably feel good to somebody else.” That’s the mindset behind picking what songs go on there.
Then also trying to pick a well rounded group of songs because we had a lot more heavier ones and a lot more melodic ones too. We balanced it pretty well. When we looked at it, we were like, “Well, half has a good, melodic kind of sense, and then half of it’s pretty brutal.” That was a good balance for us at this moment in time. We felt it was cool because it’s a real nice balance of, “We can do this and this and everything in between.”
PopHorror: This album feels like a perfect blend of your first and second albums, which had different sounds and vibes to them. I know some fans felt like, with School of Thought, DED stepped away from the nu metal roots heard on Mis-An-Thrope. Would you say RESENT has the potential to bring together those OG and new fans?
Joe Cotela: Yeah, I think so. That was a lot of the response I saw. Releasing the first couple of singles, a lot of the fans were like, “Oh, there’s my band that I loved from the first record,” which is cool, but that wasn’t really the intention. And then there was a lot in there of people saying, “Oh, this is shocking to me because I really only listened to your second record, which was a little bit more melodic.” So those people are like, “This is really heavy!” Some of the interviewers actually are like, “I don’t know, this is just really heavy,” they weren’t feeling it. I was like, “Okay, well, that’s cool.”
But then plenty of people are in the middle that like a little bit of everything, and that’s what the band is. It’s really all of us just smashing together all of our influences. We love really brutal, heavy stuff, we love beautiful, melodic things, we’ve always loved big choruses. Both of the records, that’s always been a thing. And then the breakdown stuff, we’ve added some thrash on this new record — which we’ve never done — on a song or two, which is really cool. A lot more industrial, kind of EDM stuff mixed in. We love electronic music. Hip-hop as well. When I listen through the whole thing, I feel like we just put everything that we like into the music. I like it, I think we did a good job. I have to. [laughs] Of course I like the record!
PopHorror: Obviously, every song means something special to you. But is there one that really hits that you can’t wait for people to hear?
Joe Cotela: I’m gonna go with two. The first track called “Wasted,” that was one of the last ones we wrote for the record. I just think it’s really us. We tried to write music that we felt like our future selves would be writing, maybe in three, four or five years. It was like, “Let’s write something that we wouldn’t write right now.” That was the idea and I think we kind of did something like that. I felt like we really pushed ourselves in that song. It’s really heavy, but it’s also really just interesting to me. It’s catchy and just a cool song. That’s why we put it as the opener. We all were proud of that one.
And then there’s another one called “Purpose: Be Myself,” that’s track three. Lyrically, that one’s important to me. Our purpose is so important to us. It kind of is connected to our intuition and connected to who we are and what we believe in. It’s really the meaning of life, your purpose that you find in life. Whether your purpose is art, raising a family, your job, building houses, whatever makes you feel alive when you wake up in the morning, everybody needs to find that thing that makes them feel that. I’m getting chills just thinking about the idea of existing inside of my purpose. For me, it’s music, but it’s more than that. It’s spreading joy and love, and contributing positivity to the people around me. Those are the kinds of things that I really find joy and purpose in — being hopefully a positive force in the world and using music as a vessel.
Sonically on that song, it’s a really catchy song, really cool, big chorus. It makes me think of Faith No More, Glassjaw, which are two of my favorite bands. And then it’s got a Nine Inch Nails vibe. So it’s got a cool mix of influences in it and I just really like that one.
PopHorror: I love when bands scream a good message at you!
Joe Cotela: A lot of our stuff can be really negative. But I think the negativity is with the hope of making people think about who they are and how they are, as well as being frustrated with the negative side of things. And then adding in that PMA attitude with it I think is cool. That was something that I always resonated toward in punk rock and hardcore, even in metalcore and all types of music. I’ve always loved that. Bob Marley was a big person for me lyrically growing up, always just about love and unity. But there’s a lot of rebellion in his music and a lot of anger.
PopHorror: RESENT has three tracks that feature special guests, including Chris Motionless from Motionless in White on “Until I Die.” I’d love to hear how that collaboration came to be.
Joe Cotela: Chris is a friend, we’ve done tours together. He was an early fan of the band when we came out with our first record. He did some posts about us. I remember not really knowing him at the time and being like, “Well, that’s cool, Chris likes it.” It’s cool because I’ve been a fan of Motionless for forever, they’ve been around for a long time. So we toured and became friends, and then I was just talking to him about it one day. I was like, “You want to get down on a track?” I had done “Slaughterhouse” with them at Red Rocks, I did Bryan Garris’ parts and that was really fun. He had sent me the lyrics and we just kind of practiced it by ourselves, and then met up that day and just did it. That was a pretty cool experience.
And so I thought, “That was really fun. Why don’t we do that on a song on our record? Just a heavy song. Let’s get nuts.” I wanted to hear him go hard. He was like, “Yeah, awesome!” So I sent him a couple different songs, but this is the one we landed on. I thought he was perfect for it. He killed it, and I just love and appreciate him.
PopHorror: Was the song pretty much done when he came on board, or did he add in his own flair at all?
Joe Cotela: We had a lot of the structure done. The music was done. He definitely added in his flavor, for sure, taking liberties with some of the rhythms and different things like that. He totally did his thing. It’s funny because when the song came out, a lot of people were like, “Is he even on this?” But I was like, “I don’t even care about you singing on it, dude. I just want you to go hard on it.” For me, I just wanted him to go hard like Creatures style, old school vibes. Some of their fans didn’t get it and some of them did. But again, it’s not really about that. We had a fun time making a gnarly song and I love it.
PopHorror: DED has a tour coming up with Dayseeker and In This Moment. Will this be your first time on the road in a while?
Joe Cotela: We started touring again last November, we went out with Butcher Babies, Dropout Kings and Fox Lake and it was sick. It was our first tour back in a very, very long time. We had done some festivals sprinkled out over those years, but again, we were just kind of locked down. We couldn’t really do anything. We did another tour this year with Attila. This will be our third tour back, but really our first tour with a new album, new music and being fully functioning again. The album comes out the day we play Louder Than Life, which is gonna be awesome. We did Sonic Temple this year, so we’re getting back and doing the festivals and all that stuff.
We’re kind of reintroducing ourselves to the world, which is interesting. You’re away for two years nowadays and it’s like 20 years because of the way things move. Back in the day, a band could go away for two years and it wasn’t even a big deal. It was like, “Yeah, cool, whatever.” But that’s just how it is now. So there’s a bit of reintroducing ourselves and that’s what this record is. And we have a new home with UNFD, they’re incredible. We love them. We just feel good. We feel ready, amped and charged up to get back to business.
PopHorror: Describe the feeling of performing new music for the first time in front of a festival crowd. Is it nerve wracking at all?
Joe Cotela: It depends on the type of song that you’re playing. If it’s just a ripper, then it’s no big deal. It’s chaos, so it’s fine for it to be even more chaotic because everybody’s kind of leaning into the parts and learning it. If it’s a little more of a delicate song, then it might feel a little bit more under the microscope and you might be a little more in your head possibly. But I think the ones we’re playing, this whole record, there’s really no delicate songs. They’re all rocking. So some of the new ones, I’m just excited to do them.
The only thing is, everybody’s going nuts for your well-known songs and then maybe a newer one, they’re kind of standing there. So I oftentimes try to not tell them it’s a new song. We just play it and I’ll tell them afterward. That way, they’re not in the new song mindset of, “Okay, I’m gonna sit here and indulge and listen to this and just take it in.” I like for them to just be in the vibe. I don’t want to go straight from a circle pit to everybody standing there, so I just try to let it roll.
PopHorror: What’s life like on the road for you? What are your favorite parts? Any challenges?
Joe Cotela: The challenge is always being away from your loved ones. But other than that, my band are my best friends and we have a great time. We’re always full of gratitude, especially with having it go away from us in a way for a while. There was that unsettling feeling of, “Will we get back to where we were or want to be now?” There’s a lot of gratitude everyday. Even when you get frustrated, we remind ourselves, “Find your gratitude.” This is really cool that we’re doing all this stuff. I can’t think of anything that is troublesome other than being away from my lady and my dogs. But with technology nowadays, you can see everybody, you can talk. I love being out on tour. I love being in new places, seeing new things, talking about music, meeting new people. I’m made for it.
PopHorror: For anyone who might be seeing you for the first time on this upcoming tour, what’s a typical DED show like?
Joe Cotela: A lot of energy, a lot of just getting loose. We’re all up there bouncing around, giving it 100% on stage, getting lost in the music. I think that translates to other people when you’re watching the artists kind of get lost. It’s the same thing I was saying, that frequency, that energy gets into other people. It’s singalongs, it’s mosh pits, it’s jumping up and down, it’s all that stuff. We want it to be a party when we’re on stage.
PopHorror: I have to ask, do you still wear the white contacts? How did that start? And can you see out of them, or do you need to watch where you’re walking on stage?
Joe Cotela: Yes, we do. It’s a little foggy out of it, but it’s fine. If it’s dark, it can be really dark. I’ve definitely fallen off a stage or two. But then in the daytime, like at a festival, it can be really bright. But it’s nothing terrible. When we were starting the band, I had never done anything like that. When I was younger, I was always an angry dude, like, “We’re never going to dress up and do stuff like that.” But I always loved bands that did that. I loved [Marilyn] Manson, [Rob] Zombie, [David] Bowie, but I just never did it.
Then when we started DED, I was at a place where I was kind of over music in the music industry. We just did DED for fun, we were just going to be this heavy band. We were like, “We should wear masks,” but when we first started, we definitely sounded like Slipknot a little too much and we were like, “We can’t wear masks and kind of sound like Slipknot.” So we thought that [the contacts] was enough where it was impactful, but it wasn’t fully covering us up. When we did it and we all looked at each other, we were like, “Dude, you look cool!” It’s kind of unsettling a little bit and we liked that because we always wanted a bit of that unsettling vibe in the music.
There’s always these weird sounds and stuff. Speaking of horror movies, the scores usually have these weird noises, all the way back to the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You’re like, “I don’t even know what that was.” It’s like an industrial kind of thing. So we always try to put weird noises, unsettling tones into the music, and I think that went with the eyes. When we started, we wore black straight jackets. We did that for about a year and a half and that went away as we got a record deal and did the whole thing. But yeah, a lot of the early parts of it were very horror movie-oriented. We still carry that with us in a lot of ways.
We stopped doing the contacts for a little while. We did a little bit of a different vibe. There was body paint and we were still dressing up and doing that kind of thing. But now, we’ve gone back to that original idea of just the contacts. It’s cool. It gives you a bit of a superpower, like, people can’t see into your soul, but you can see them. It’s subtle, but it’s powerful.
PopHorror: You mentioned Texas Chainsaw Massacre…did any other horror movies or specific aspects of those films influence DED?
Joe Cotela: I remember we were listening to some of the stuff from The Shining, some of the music from that, some of the noises from that, some of that classic stuff. I love horror movies. I have horror movie sleeves. Jaws is my favorite movie of all time, I just love sharks. When I was little, I watched Jaws all the time. I used to just draw sharks eating people, which is weird, but I’m not a serial killer! I’m sure my mom was worried about it. [laughs] We even sampled the, “Smile, you son of a bitch,” before a breakdown and it was pretty cool. That song’s still there. I don’t know if we’ll ever release it, but we went as far as even using a line from that. There’s all kinds of stuff.
PopHorror: Do you have any final words for the fans?
Joe Cotela: The record’s coming out Sept. 19. We’re really proud of it. We think people are gonna love it. We think people are gonna be moved by it. Can’t wait to play it on the upcoming Black Mass tour with In This Moment, Dayseeker and The Funeral Portrait [check out our interview with Lee Jennings here]. We’ll see everybody at Louder Than Life, and we’re just excited to be back and hitting it again.
Thanks for speaking with us, Joe! RESENT will be available Sept. 19 on all streaming platforms, as well as vinyl and CD. Keep up with DED, including upcoming tour dates, at dedband.com/.
