February 20, 2014

Have a Nice Life - The Unnatural World (2014)


Remember the story of Snow White, where the Evil Queen or whatever had a magical mirror? And every day the Queen would ask it: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" And the mirror would always reply that she, the Queen, was the fairest of them all, because the mirror was a beta faggot stuck deep in the friendzone who thought that if he hurled enough compliments at her, the Queen would finally see what a good mirror it is and undress herself in front of it. Until one day when the mirror grew some balls, let go of his obsession and got a cute girlfriend, at which point the Queen became jealous and ordered to have her killed by a hunky dude. The mirror understood just what a crazy bitch the Queen was, so he and his girlfriend moved to another city, got a nice apartment and lived rich, fulfilling lives together. That's a good story. 

Anyway, our dearest Volo is kind of like my magical mirror, except for hardcore music. Whenever I ask him "Volo, Volo behind the drum kit, what hardcore band should I rock out to today?", he always replies with at least one band I've never heard of that turns out to be really, really good! Have a Nice Life is one of those bands, except they don't play hardcore, but a weird mix of drone, ambient and doom metal. In fact, if you listen close enough, you can pinpoint exactly the elements from each genre, like a musical puzzle: 
  • dark, depressive lyrics from doom metal
  • a constant state of unease via long, sustained drones
  • gloomy atmosphere and weird, disintegrating sounds
Add to these the ghastly, almost hollow vocals that seem to float around the music and you end up with an album that kinda sounds like Animal Collective in their early acoustic period,  if they were also going through some tough times and instead of dressing up like animals, they just sort of sat around, contemplating the emptiness and pointlessness of existence. All in all, The Unnatural World is one of those very atmospheric and special albums that you owe to yourself to listen to at least once. Although, in all fairness, I'm now listening to their first album, Deathconsciousness, and I think I might already like it a lot more. Suck it and see, as they say.



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