During this time, Carlton Bost was added on Ztar and guitar, and "Creature" Ashburn Miller replaced "The Beast" Craig Riker on bass in January 2002.

[6] While containing obvious electronic elements of the '80s, such as shrill synthesizer melodies and generously reverberated percussion, the album also features deep, purring guitar distortion and clean, goth-like vocals.

Commencement features two cover songs: "Brand New Love" written by Lou Barlow of the band Sebadoh and "Tom Sawyer" by Rush.

[5] The material on Commencement received praise from Wayne Static of Static-X who compared it to a combination of Type O Negative and Orgy and described the sound as "very melodic, lush, beautiful—yet brutally heavy at the same time.

The backside features all five band members standing over a world map, simply illustrated with blank white eyes and their signature color schemes.

Each member is represented in the liner notes by a signature color (red, blue, yellow, green, and gray), stage name, and graphic.

Deadsy opened for Static-X, Stone Temple Pilots, Staind, and Linkin Park on the Family Values Tour in the fall of 2001.

During this time, Deadsy's Elijah Blue contributed vocals to "What's Going On (Reality Check Mix)" a collaborative reworking led by Fred Durst.

The video was directed by Fred Durst at Hayvenhurst Studios in Van Nuys, California and debuted on April 31[dubious – discuss], 2002.

Durst, who became a fan after hearing Deadsy's earlier material, praised the band's willingness to shoot extensively in a cloud of CO2: "I laid down in it for 10 seconds and my throat dried up and I was feeling nauseous.

Blue also described the song as "kind of the Trojan horse of the record... We feel like this is simply a good rock jam.

One stand-out review of acclamation came from Alternative Press which noted "Deadsy's mix of electronics, death-metal distortion and lugubrious vocals offers something magnificently alien, yet familiar."

In 2018, Commencement was ranked number 21 on Business Insider's list of "37 albums that music critics really hate, but normal people love".

[19] Deadsy's association with Korn and Fred Durst and critical tour slots gained them mainstream exposure and significant press attention.