Dead Daisies - Live At Stonedead Review
- The Joker
- Nov 25, 2025
- 4 min read
Released - Nov 14th
Live records come in two different classes: the slick, ProTools-fondled untruths where every
note lands like a gymnast with a good lawyer… and then whatever Live At Stonedead is
pretending to be. It's like The Dead Daisies duct-taped a microphone onto a Harley's exhaust, fired it up in a room with acoustics of a storage unit, and invited two thousand people who definitely skipped leg day to call it "spiritually fulfilling."
The band refers to this as "Raw". Basically, Raw's the same word used by celebrity chefs to describe chicken right before the lawsuit. This album's feral in ways that make you check the locks twice. Break into your flat, take a shit in the kettle then ask if you've got any notes on its artistic vision - that kind of feral.
Doug Aldrich-informed someone that the crowd was "fired up." They sound more like a lit
cigarette hitting a fuel depot during a clearance sale on unresolved grievances.
Long Way To Go explodes mid-argument to kick the record off. Yeah, pretty sure the band
took that whole "ease into it" thing as a personal affront. Guitars don't scream-they scream
with the unwavering confidence of men who have already pre-paid for their physical therapy.
But more than anything, though, Rise Up corners you. It's motivational, in the way ransom
notes sometimes are.
I find Dead And Gone a little too on-the-nose, and my spine filed a complaint halfway
through the first chorus.
Light 'Em Up: I just can't believe everybody kept their eyebrows on. Well, if they did, that is
divine intervention on break.
I Wanna Be Your Bitch: I’m not here to kink shame anybody's Thursday night, but from
crowd reaction you'd think somebody announced student-loan forgiveness and free cake. The song's fine. Enthusiasm: medically suspicious.
Gonna Ride staggers in, by which point it's curdled into divorced-dad-on-a-motorcycle
energy so concentrated it really ought to be sold at motorway petrol stations between the
energy drinks and life mistakes.
Take a Long Line functions, in many ways, much like a cardio stress test-I'm all but certain
that someone's cardiologist issued a cease-and-desist.
Going Down could either be the name of a blues standard or the warning from a structural
engineer. Hard to tell. That's the charm.
Fortunate Son comes next-to cover Creedence is either brave or stupid; never both. The
crowd goes utterly bonkers, screaming like their property taxes just got audited live on stage.
Energy to make you think maybe letting the British win wouldn't have been the worst idea.
Mexico radiates: "I made terrible decisions on holiday and I'd do it all again next summer."
By the time Midnight Moses and Resurrected come crashing through, the album's already
built up enough momentum to constitute an OSHA violation. These are no longer songs -
they're industrial accidents with rhythm. Somebody should be filling out paperwork.
They end with Helter Skelter because subtlety is for cowards.
Covering The Beatles requires paperwork and a mental health check in and of itself, let alone doing a cover of this Beatles track: Charles Manson tainted it once and apparently The Dead Daisies thought, "Yeah, but what if we made it louder?". The stage should've collapsed out of principle.
Ah, the elephant in the corner with the threadbare Grateful Dead t-shirt: yes, they do
Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. Yes, they do The Beatles covers, and yes, they do The
Sensational Alex Harvey Band covers - a band so obscure its name being invoked practically
conjures up someone's dad. I can practically hear the purists wheezing in indignation. Who
gives a toss? At least The Dead Daisies have the good grace to sound like they're committing minor felonies while doing so.
That said, from that perspective, a supergroup is just a fancy word for the expensive
replacement parts scrounged from other bands. Think Dr. Frankenstein if he'd been really into Deep Purple, moderately into impulse control, and dressing like a man who definitely knows a guy who can fix your amp "cheap."
Live At Stonedead isn't here to win any awards or make any friends with the neighbours, it's
here to kick in your door at 2 AM, hijack every speaker in the house, crank the volume to
"permanent damage," and dare you to call the council. It's loud enough to wake the dead,
annoy the living, and probably get me another ASBO.
This album is for the leather jacket crowd, for whom volume knobs were a polite suggestion
for cowards, for anyone who thinks rock should rattle something loose in your chest cavity-
ideally something that'll take a trip to the doctor to inspect: music for idiots like us, who wake up dehydrated in some stranger's tent after a festival, swearing 'never again', and six months later get tickets because life means nothing and the beer was cheap.
Score: 7.3/10. The .3 is for Aldrich's fingers, which probably qualify as concealed weapons,
and as proof that rock still can sound like it might be arrested on sight.
The missing 2.7? Chiropractor bills, tinnitus, sunburn flashbacks from Mexico, the creeping
guilt that I should apologize to my neighbors, and the fact I can still hear this album when my house is silent — like it's waiting. Would I recommend it? Only to people I'm legally allowed to endanger. Is it good? Depends how loose your definition is. Will it make you feel alive? Regrettably.
