Review Summary: Have a Nice Life's least monumental, but fun-to-listen-to album
With some kind of a ship, Dan & Tim are distancing themselves from the shores of doom, gloom, drone and death. A drummer replaced their trusty drum machine, winds of new-found inspiration are howling, the whole crew is agog and ready to set sail for... the Sea of Worry.
Sea of Worry contains less DEPRESSIVE POST-INDUSTRIAL DOOMGAZE and more classic Joy Division-ish post-punk sound. It's anxious yet energetic, rhythmic yet atmospheric.
Furthermore, the lyrical focus switches from introspection to the outside world. The fundamental impeller of this change is the main singer's new lifestyle as a father and all the dread and beauty that comes along with it. Mutare tempora.
It's difficult to speak of this band without mentioning their magnum opus Deathconsiousness era whose claws reach, 11 years later, even to this album in forms of Trespassers W and Destinos.
Have a Nice Life's identity is put to the test with a different, more crisp and high-fi than usual, approach to production and mixing, nonetheless, it holds, thanks to those two songs and HANL's unique musical fingerprint.
In addition to that, it's their shortest and most easily digestible record so far. Also, I can't help but to notice that it feels somewhat rushed, and that some promising musical ideas weren't developed to their maximum potential, which is a disappointment because lack of perfectionism isn't found in their earlier works.
There would even be an argument that this album sounds casual if it weren't for the 13-minute-long final track which explores the biblical concept of hell and the problem of evil by a sample of a pastor.
"I think a more crushing question that we need to be asking - that is often overlooked - is this: what justification is there for a holy and perfect God to forgive a wicked and rebellious sinner? What justification is there for a holy and perfect God to forgive a wicked and rebellious sinner?' In other words, 'what grounds does God have to forgive the most vile and wretched of people?' This is a cosmic problem."
Summa summarum: a great post-punk album, but certainly the weakest full-length album in the present Have a Nice Life discography.
