New James Dewees Project: Death Spells

James Dewees has been a member of Coalesce, The Get Up Kids, Reggie and the Full Effect, New Found Glory, My Chemical Romance and Leathermouth. As of a few months ago we can now add Death Spells to this list. Also, is Leathermouth a thing again?

It looks like Property of Zack broke the news a few days ago. The story was an interview with Dewees primarily about RATFE, but below are a few responses where Death Spells was mentioned:

I have this other thing going with Frank from MCR called Death Spells. We’re opening up for Mindless Self Indulgence in two or three weeks. It’s more like an electronic-hardcore project. We’ve been working with a visual graphics artist and he’s been making these insane videos for us. The music is a little more intense than what MCR was or Reggie. It’s more in the vein of Ministry and stuff like that.

[...]

No, we just posted a song for fun online to get a demo out there. We have a full-length written. There’s red tape to go through before we can announce it. It’s crazy to say out loud because there’s so much stuff.

[...]

And the Death Spells record. It’ll probably be something where Death Spells and Reggie go out together. It could be Leathermouth, Death Spells, and Reggie. I could play drums in Leathermouth, Frank and I would do Death Spells, then Reggie would play and Frank could play bass.

[...]

I used to do Reggie and New Found Glory. It was like two and a half hours on stage. I would be exhausted, but I was in the best shape of my life. I should do three shows in a night. It’d be in great shape. I’ve been running and lifting weights for the Death Spells shows. I want that and Reggie to be high energy. They need to be off the wall like they used to be. It’s an actual performance. No two shows are ever really the same.

So, Death Spells features Frank Iero of the recently disbanded My Chemical Romance. Iero also played with Dewees in the hardcore band Leathermouth--which was a horribly underrated band in my opinion. As far as I can see, the project only features these two so far.

The band is supposed to be industrial/electronic like Ministry. The song below pretty noisy and glitchy too.

Dewees wants Death Spells to tour, possibly with Reggie and/or Leathermouth. Which raises more questions about the state of Leathermouth. The band apparently fizzled out a few years back, then announced one show this year. Maybe there will be more in the future? The one show Leathermouth announced they would play was the Skate and Surf festival, which according to Death Spells' website, will also feature Death Spells. So Dewees wasn't kidding about the whole playing in two bands in one night thing.

Death Spells also have an album written but they might not have recorded it yet. The interview also mentions a demo that was posted online. PunkNews and AbsolutePunk both ran this story, but neither attempted to dig up the song.

The song is titled "Where Are My Fucking Pills" and I'd say Ministry is a pretty good comparison.