Denver Metalcore Band Drop Dead, Gorgeous to Reunite at Summit

It's a song as old as Denver (or at least the last few decades of Denver): A local band signs to a label, tours extensively, gets tons of national attention...then undergoes a breakup instead of a breakthrough. Drop Dead, Gorgeous knows this tune all too well. The progressive melodic-metalcore outfit formed in 2004 and released three albums before dissolving seven years later. The band's final two full-lengths — 2007's Worse Than a Fairy Tale, which featured Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland, and 2009's The Hot N' Heavy — came out on Suretone Records, an imprint of Interscope. Success seemed inevitable.

All that promise fizzled away in 2011. Singer-keyboardist Danny Stillman and drummer Danny Cooper kept busy in their next group, the now-defunct Bleach Blonde (later renamed 888). Then, in 2021, Drop Dead, Gorgeous's guitarist-keyboardist, Kyle Browning, died. After that, silence. That is, until July this year, when the unexpected announcement of a reunion show dropped — along with many jaws. It all goes down on Saturday, December 28, at Summit. There are a lot of unanswered questions swirling around Drop Dead, Gorgeous's sudden comeback; Stillman and Cooper spoke to Westword to answer a few of them.

Westword: It's been thirteen years since Drop Dead, Gorgeous broke up. I don't think a lot of people were expecting this reunion.

Danny Stillman: Yeah, I don't think so, either. I think the reunion really was kind of random. We thought about doing it
for a long time, but for some reason this year, we were all kind of like, "Why not go for it?" So we set aside enough time to put everything together.

Danny Cooper: Ask any musician, and they'll tell you that music is an itch that really never goes away. But for all of us in Drop Dead, life just kind of happened. We have kids and careers. But we've all stayed in touch and remained close friends throughout the years. Danny and I have played in a couple bands together since Drop Dead broke up — Bleach Blonde and 888 — but with the twentieth anniversary of our first album, In Vogue, coming up, it all fell into place.

Did anything from those old songs surprise you as you revisited them?

Stillman: Yeah. I think Kyle and I were probably fourteen when we first started writing Drop Dead songs. Relearning them was quite the undertaking.

How so?

Stillman: We just haven't played them for so long. I haven't screamed in so many years. It was interesting, trying to do that again. At first, I literally couldn't even scream at all, and I was like, "Oh, my God, how am I going to do this? Holy shit, how did we play these songs? Seriously, how did we come up with them?" Especially Kyle, because he had such creativity when writing songs. We're trying to learn some of his guitar parts, and we still aren't totally sure how he played them.

Cooper: A lot of people have asked us, "It must be like riding a bike, right?" Not really, though. I mean, I can still play drums, but I haven't played heavy music like this in years. It's a lot of work to get back to that point, both physically and mentally, [to] get all those muscles working again.

What was it like to revisit these songs without Kyle?

Cooper: For all of us, Kyle's passing was just an absolute tragedy. His presence is greatly missed, in Drop Dead and all of our personal lives. He left a very noticeable hole, for sure, as a bandmate and as a friend.

Stillman: His death was very sudden. Right before he died, we were actually talking with him about doing a reunion and maybe working on some new stuff. But for a long time, we couldn't even think of doing a reunion without him. It was something he wanted to do probably more than any of us. But by doing it now, I feel like it's kind of a tribute to him. It's definitely therapeutic for me. We'll see how it is on stage, if I end up teary-eyed with him not there. But ultimately, I think it's something that we need to do now.

Why, exactly, did Drop Dead break up in the first place?

Stillman: Me and Cooper were a little bit burned out with playing heavy music in general. Maybe we felt a little drained, creatively, when it came to heavy music. And the music industry is brutal. It's a tough thing to do. We had some really cool things happen, some successful albums and songs. It did kind of feel like we were right on the verge of that next big
thing, but some years were on the road way more than we were at home. It was just burnout by that point.

Cooper: At that point in all of our lives, we were ready to have more or less normal lives. You know, kids came into the picture, all the typical growing older stuff. Sometimes you have to make a major departure from music to focus on other aspects of life. Reality kicks in, and you have to pay the bills. Music kind of takes a back seat. I don't think we ever officially broke up. Initially we were like, "Let's just take a break and see where things go." Then the band just slipped away, to be honest. There's definitely some regret there, at least for me. It makes me wonder what would have happened to the band if we hadn't taken that break.

After this reunion, is there a possibility of more shows or even new songs?

Stillman: We do have new music written. We have two new songs, and we're going to play them at the reunion show. We're in the works of coordinating with labels and all that boring, behind-the-scenes stuff that we can't talk about yet. Exactly what will happen is still up in the air. And we'll probably play some festivals and do some weekend tours here and there. There may also be opportunities for tours in the future.

Cooper: We wanted to make sure the new songs were things that people who used to be fans of our will still be able to relate to and enjoy. But the main thing we had in mind was, "Hey, what would Kyle like?"

Stillman: Getting ready for this reunion has been a ton of work, but also really fun, even with all the emotions it's bringing up. I know once the show is over, it will all be worth it. I'm certainly thankful for the opportunity to get to do it all again.

Drop Dead, Gorgeous, with Fox Lake, Forty Fathoms and the Burial Plot, 7 p.m. Saturday, December 28, Summit, 1902 Blake Street. Find tickets at summitdenver.com. Visit Drop Dead, Gorgeous on Instagram.