The genres didn't matter the planet-devouring Deathconsciousness bled bedroom pop into amplifier worship all it liked, but came to be known as a masterpiece of depression.įor scope alone, Deathconsciousness feels important, but it also makes the band's new music sound contented and unfussy. They channelled them through their overwhelmingly heavy, occasionally pretty sound – accurately but unhelpfully labelled "doomgaze", a genre portmanteau used to describe their marrying of metal, industrial, post-rock, drone and shoegaze.
Have a Nice Life were special because of those words, related like solipsism circling blogs. And then there was the record's ultimate mission statement, screamed through hand-clasped mouths: "Why is life so lonely?".
"I just don't accept this", uttered inevitably. What stood out instead were the band's miserable, human-scale aphorisms, and how they manifested: "I don't love!", shot in the dark. Most listeners were late game genre-hoppers, oblivious to the record's original minimal pressing. Their debut record, Deathconsciousness, featured a seventy page booklet presenting a character study of the little-known historical figure Antiochus, but like its protagonist, the music's true meaning faded. Despite their high concepts, Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga have always been subject to their inner demons. The Unnatural World makes a subjunctive point: you might die. There probably doesn't, but I've started to believe in one anyway this is a Bedroom Conspiracy Theory at its most convincing, unspecific and so personal in its threat against your life that the words feel suffocating. It's kissed off with eight terrifying words about good old you: "There exists a secret plot to kill you". The liner notes of The Unnatural World, Have a Nice Life's second LP, contain a manifesto on the advances of science and the grip of mortality, full of analytical philosophy and post-rock appropriate fear-mongering.
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