Review Summary: "Describe your style in three words?" "Slint, spider land."
A spectre is haunting the South London Borough of Lambeth. This spectre, of course, is post-punk revival - now joined, apparently, by slowcore revival. Taking refuge in the Windmill in Brixton, these phantoms trace less than forgotten musical stylings into a by-numbers format, churning out perfectly fine replications of truly pioneering artists, now with much less substance and excitement. Throw in some inescapable fanfare and a fair shake of nepotism and these ghosts claim a fucking haunting presence.
Enter deathcrash, arising (as they affirm) ‘against all odds’ alongside an emerging Windmill scene as the diamonds in the rough of Cambridge University. Interestingly, deathcrash trade in the usual post-punk quirk outline of Squid, Black Midi or Black Country New Road for a softer post-rock inspired slowcore - a genre with an even smaller range of canonical bands to lift from. The tension-laden, meditative side of slowcore bloomed like a quaint antithesis to the more cathartic and melodramatic emo prominent at the same time within the same scenes. Think Low, Bedhead, Codeine, Duster, the slower side of Slint. A more comprehensive piece might raise the parallel between the original emergence of slowcore, and today’s emergence of slowcore-revival alongside modern post-punk. Fragility sure makes a nice pairing for catharsis. Granted, this post-rock slowcore sound still relied on mini-crescendos and tension, a slight pull to unravel. The best bands expertly manoeuvre this fine line, drawing you in, to release.
This is the first issue with deathcrash: if you’ve heard most of the bands above, there’s really no need to seek out this album. If you haven’t, you might as well seek the original source. How’s the music? It’s fine. It’s literally fine. It’s ridiculously long for a slowcore album that remains firmly in one gear throughout the runtime. For a band who border on zero original thoughts, this becomes a bit of an unearned slog. What can you hear on their 65 minute LP debut? Slint, obviously. An amalgamation of the other bands cited above. Some Mogwai. Some twinkly emo (to lift from the other prominent scene of the 90s). There you have deathcrash. Purposefully repetitive David Pajo guitar stylings make up the majority of the playing here, constructing the tension alongside slight percussion in aid of the eventual release. However, unlike those of the best, the underwhelming releases here rarely justify the similarly monotonous build up. As well as this we have some oh-so delicate vocals, and of course, ambient background clippings of conversations candidly placed across otherwise subtle instrumental tracks in order to aid the album’s atmosphere. For the most part, it is all fine. Despite retreading the muddy footsteps in Spiderland’s iconic artwork, deathcrash trudge along barely making a fraction of that album’s emotional or atmospheric impact
Nostalgia and the forever rotating genre cycle are inevitable in music. Post-punk revivalism is basically a bi-annual affair at this point. Bands will always borrow from earlier bands. This isn’t the issue, utilising earlier scenes or styles to push your sound forward is normal - there’s homage to be paid! It’s just that there’s something particularly harrowing about this new wave of bands lifting a style almost directly, entirely transparently. It’s especially jarring when these bands are praised to the heavens by critics who would (rightly) rip on Greta Van Fleet, and you’re left wondering whether you’ve missed the trick here somewhere. Sure, if you’re borrowing from Duster or Slint your music is probably going to be more interesting than a band stealing from Led Zep, but it doesn’t mean the replication isn’t frustrating. Ah well, fuck it. Listen to sparklehorse.
