My Favorite Album

1. What is your favorite album and why?
2. What do you enjoy about life on a very corporeal level?
3. Why?

I'm going to attempt to tackle the first question because the latter two are simply too complex for this nearly microblogging format.

Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness (Enemies List Home Recordings - 2008)

This album is not for the faint of heart, or perhaps it is. Perhaps Have A Nice Life made this record precisely for those of us who have observed the weights of this world, the very nature of this machine, and felt crushed just as they. This album is full of fantastic songcraft and an ear for powerful textures, but at it's heart lies a once burning passion that has been extinguished by existential conclusions that frontman Dan Barrett just can't face.

I just don't accept this at all.

The album title refers to one's awareness that he will inevitably die, and the album is an exploration of this concept. It is an odyssey through all shades of depression that the band members face, and the emotion is channeled to the listener expertly. "A Quick One Before The Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut" starts the first record, The Plow That Broke The Plains, to a quiet start with a repeating guitar line and synth swells that slowly drift the listener into the atmosphere that Have A Nice Life dwell in. Next, "Bloodhail" kicks in, and it feels like some dark, twisted b-side that Joy Division never dared to record. Another notable track, "The Big Gloom", is third, and it shows that the band delivers its most tender, emotional moments when drowned in reverb, soaring melodies, and fuzzed-out shoegaze production. Barrett flip-flops constantly in his struggle to cope with his reality. He is torn between his fear of death and his paralytic fear of life. He croons, "So please, please, please, release me."

This album is a true piece of outsider art - the band members having little to no training and Barrett claiming on multiple occasions that he doesn't listen to a whole lot of music. The unique sound, the earnestness, the honesty that is displayed here is a product of necessity; this is all that the band members seem to know. Their blend of shoegaze, ambient, drone, industrial, post-punk, black metal, post-rock, and doom is not a calculated attempt to achieve underground success but simply the result of a couple tortured geniuses with limited means trying to embed their souls in some low-bitrate files (Barrett lost the freaking lossless masters). The rest of the songs on the first record are notable in their own respects, but the closer "There Is No Food" is one of my favorites with its opening synth blips that just hint of disaster up ahead. The bass starts booming in the band's final attempt to destroy one's eardrums before changing to the second record.

I'm miserable whenever I think of it and I think of it all the time.

Though the first record is fantastic, I must admit that my preference is for the second, The Future. The opening drones and dirty riffs of "Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail" hint towards the aural assault that is about to be launched on the listener. "Holy F***ing S***: 40,000" rips one's heart with a chorus filled with some Barrett's most saddening melodies and a beautiful piano line to back him up but quickly deteriorates back into the band's black soul of gigantic riffs and pounding, industrial drums. The title track is an instrumental post-apocalyptic journey into the three songs that follow on the b-side.

These atoms are liars.

"Deep, Deep" is another fast, riff-laden track that displays more of Barrett's characteristic discontentment. The chorus soars with synth string stabs that really engage the listener in this dark narrative. This track would be a near great enough album closer if I weren't aware of the two monsters that follow it. Next is "I Don't Love" - arguably my favorite HANL track and a testament to droney, shoegazey, wall-of-sound production. A choir of defeated by their struggles starts the track singing the main line over a subdued drum beat when suddenly their struggles, their terrors, their ghosts plow into you like a locomotive. A wave of sound and pure emotion drowns you as the tracks drops; you struggle to catch your breath but land isn't in sight. The singing continues, but Dan is so far from you and all you can do is weep. In a barely discernible manner, Barrett yells, "I don't love/I don't feel anything/I don't feel anything where this love should be." Without exaggeration, I can say that this song has drawn tears from my eyes nearly every time. It's quite hard for me to handle to empathy that this song forces onto one's shoulders.

I don't want to feel this anymore.

The final track, "Earthmover", is nothing short of its name. An eleven-minute epic, it begins with some unassuming guitar and Barrett's by now familiar voice singing of some creatures "carved out of stone" when suddenly at the one-minute mark, the band break into familiar shoegaze territory, a distant piano melody piercing through one's heart. A memorable chorus is sung, but this is not what this song has to offer. At four-minutes, the song gets quiet, more than before. Barrett's voice is more delicate than ever; these creatures no longer seem terrible but despairing. Barrett sings out, now in a multi-tracked choir:

Nothing hurts them

Nothing gets under their stone skin

And when their earthern mouths will open up

Just what words should come out? but

'We wish we were dead.'

The song gives out, the bell tolls, a drone takes over, it is Barrett's time to go. But suddenly the piano melody, never so clear before, rings out, and the music returns with the most bone-crushing sounds I have ever witnessed. The guitars, drums, and effects seem to be at their most sinister, and one can barely maintain one's composure. If "I Don't Love" didn't kill your soul, this pummeling, pounding phrase will certainly leave your body empty. This Is Deathconsciousness. Have A Nice Life just granted you a glimpse at your fate and has assured you that you will not be prepared.

This is my favorite album because I feel compelled to convey all of this material. This album encompasses all of my favorite genres, contains memorable songs, and leaves me emotionally drained every time. There is no album that I makes me feel more passionately or more apathetic, and I am endlessly indebted to the band.