No it's not dead. There is even a branch about to flower. If you cut the branches back to living wood and keep it watered this year it should recover. On the other hand it's a bit boring having multiple identical laurels. So you could just dump it and get something more interesting.

Thanks! We have a fairly large yard, so we plan on surrounding them with fun flowers like echinacea and achillea.

i would give it a few more weeks ... just to be able to SEE whats viable .. and whats ugly ...

then i would start removing the bare parts ...

if there was some lush spring growth ... on top of an otherwise bare stick ... i would look down the stick.. and if i saw some good buds down low ... i would remove the stick above .... repeat ad nauseum ....

its usually pretty easy to figure out what to prune off.. if you get over spring fever.. and give the plant a little time to show you ...

btw ... with no insult to the root mass ... you might be surprised how fast it can recover ...

ken

ps: since its a flowering plant.. if you insist on a flower show for this exact plant.. wait until after it blooms ... but.. since you have others ... perhaps you dont care if this one flowers.. and just want to clean it up.. asap ... and it can flower next year ...

The second one isn't particularly healthy either, including it having a sparse looking section - as though there is a condition it shares with the mostly failed one in the first picture.

Prunus laurocerasus actually does too well in the local climate, being a reseeding nuisance species here. So it's not a monsoonal climate plant like an Asian rhododendron that might be expected to go south if not watered during hot spells.

However if this was a recent planting there could still have been drought damage. Otherwise there is some other circumstance that is producing a diminished performance.