Review Summary: Deathconsciousness cliff notes
So, how much did you like
Deathconsciousness?
This is pretty much the essential question going into
Time of Land. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to listen to it if you haven’t already listened to
Deathconsciousness (and if you were thinking about pulling that bullshi
t, you can just stop it right now), and
Time of Land more or less captures the essence of
Deathconsciousness without the stand back holy fu
ck moments that made that album a vital discovery in 2008.
So, how much did you like
Deathconsciousness?
Did you not mind the extensive ambient exercises that repeatedly sedated an already sedate album? Because those are here on
Time of Land. Or that one drum beat, the one where the bass hits sound like grinding gears in a machine and the snare hits the exhaust pipe? Because those are here too. If these aspects of
Deathconsciousness didn’t appeal to you, turn back now, because on a surface level, Have A Nice Life’s aesthetic isn’t really all that drastically altered here; in fact it’s very much intact. The slow burning, reverb drenched loneliness that defines
Deathconsciousness also defines
Time of Land. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also carried over from
Deathconsciousness is a great sense of unity, a feeling that these four songs are meant to go together to create something greater than their parts, though it’s hard to see if that’s anything but a
Deathconsciousness cliff notes. Still musically ambitious, Have a Nice Life make
Time of Land a sprawling teaser of their identity, covering in about 20 minutes everything that
Deathconsciousness covered in about an hour and a half.
Being so conceptually and sonically linked to
Deathconsciousness puts
Time of Land inescapably centered its predecessor’s massive shadow, thus its impact upon you the listener is directly linked to how you felt about what Have a Nice Life did on
Deathconsciousness. It’s a simple critique, but an unavoidable one. I mean, how can you not recall “Hunter” while submersing yourself in the mire of “Wizard of the Black Hundreds” or hear that groggy bass in “Woe Untos Us” and not think of “Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail?” Those apathetic, reverb drenched vocals again appear to soak the EP in despair, still airily playing off one another to create dissonances and gorgeous harmonies as if by accident, and those droning bass lines and teasingly post rock chord changes are as droning and teasingly post rock as ever. This isn’t a forward movement, or necessarily a lateral one for Have a Nice Life, but rather an entire lack of movement in any direction whatsoever. They’re standing still, content to settle in the aesthetic they created for
Deathconsciousness, which is wonderful for their fans, but will do little to win over any skeptics.
So, how much did you like
Deathconsciousness?
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