Rosesdead Official Biography

Ok this band is pretty new to me, but I cannot tell you how severe of an impact it had on me. This band has got to be one of the best things to ever happen to recent metalcore. Unfortunately they decided to break up in 2008, so I wont ever get to see them. This band could have seriously been as huge as Killswitch Engage had they stuck around longer.

Rosesdead was formed in Oakville in 2000 by Jason Mante and Dave Alexander (guitars), Cole Stephenson (bass) and Dave (drums). I’m not aware of any demos by the early line-up, but they soon recruited Adam Szeminski on vocals. Apparently there were a number of demos then, but the only one I am aware of was their first 4 song ep, which was self titled in 2002, and had by then Brett Diederichs on guitar (replacing Dave Alexander) and Shane McIntosh on drums.

The band quickly signed to the brand new record label, BlackBox Recordings (now going under BlackBox Music, due to another label from New York with the same name). The labels second release would be the bands first official release, “The Relationship Between Music and Numbers” ep in June 2004. Now by this time the band was almost touring full time, and were announcing a full length album to be released in mid-2005. The band did in fact begin writing, however in early 2005 the band was faced with the problem of a leaving vocalist just a few months prior to the already booked studio time. The band continued to write material while looking for a replacement. It wasn’t until the album was fully written that they came across Matt Wedge who was at the time in the band Fordirelifesake. Matt and Jason wrote lyrics over the written songs, and headed in the studio to record the album.

In March 2006 “Stages ” was released on BlackBox in Canada while OneDaySavior released in in the states. They had an insane record release party at the tail end of the month where they played the entire record live, but only to end up facing another dilemma in the month after. One of their guitarists, Brett Diederichs, would leave the band less than a month after the album was released. They immediately started advertising for a replacement on their myspace and quickly found Todd McDonald. The band would finally go back to tour full time throughout the entire summer.

Once again they were then expecting another tragedy. Shane McIntosh announced he was going back to school at the end of the summer, so they had to find a replacement for the already booked tour which was to last until late November. Kyle Clark would filled in, but Matt would also then announced he could not commit to the rest of the tour for external obligations. James would be taking his place temporarily.

Now when the band got back from touring and the two temporary members went back to their regular lives, it would seem the band would be over, because of such a set back. And it would seem so for an entire year! It wasn’t until November 2007 that the band decided to play another show, after all the members did end up back together again. This would be a sort of reunion show, as the line up would be almost identical to the one of Stages (minus Brett). Well after those few comeback shows, the band realized they actually couldn’t continue the band because everyone had so many external obligations. So they all set themselves to do a farewell mini-tour.

In June 2008 Rosesdead would headline a total of six final shows in Ontario, and would present to the fans a super limited (200 hand numbered copies) DVD, entitled “Faith in Dreams” which had a load of live material recorded during their comeback shows in 2007, as well as a multitude of additional live following.

So that was Rosesdead. I seriously urge you to check out Stages. It’s included in the discography bellow, along with the two eps and the live dvd.

Rosesdead on Myspace
Rosesdead – Discography
Rosesdead – Faith in Dreams