Have A Nice Life
Deathconsciousness

Have a Nice Life are a duo that grows in New York. This seems to me the most essential thing without delving too much into genetic factors.

Many have compared them to the new Joy Division, to the revival, dust off as you see fit, of the gothic that made the world music scene vibrate, but I find this option a bit too simplistic, even though it is high-minded. However, I believe that in this case, we have gone beyond that, believing in the evolutionist theory and child of its own years of Music, with a capital M.

The melancholy of sounds that have created something unrepeatable, which has given a communal name to groups like Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, Lycia, Siouxie, Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Dead Can Dance, Christian Death, New Order, and we could continue typing for at least another three minutes, often gives rise to disputable points of view, not necessarily wrong. Yet I believe that milestones should be left in peace to live their time, at least limiting oneself to carry them consciously knowing that no one will take them away from there, without necessarily seeking them in other people's notes, and I say this because I'm one of those who stubbornly searches for those sounds there.

With Have a Nice Life and the debut work "Deathconsciousness", we are faced with a work of pure perfection, a concept album born from the same melancholy mentioned above and reworks it, modifies it in the composition, but carries it along like pure affection, like pure love, almost as if it were an essential genetic factor.

How can one not fall in love just for this?

Once the foundation worthy of the best praise is established, Have a Nice Life carry out an in-depth study of sounds, filling them with "choiring" voices that might remind of the cold and soft Sigur Ros, just like the more violent Mogwai or Mum. Just these two elements lead to a lethal fusion that can only be understood by listening.

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture," and in this case, Frank Zappa wasn't wrong by a comma.

"Deathconsciousness" leaves you open-mouthed as if in front of a perfectly orchestrated string concert, it leaves you breathless inside a gothic cathedral in the company of all the aforementioned milestones. A work that leaves no room for smudges, with impeccable, slow, repetitive, sinuous intros that grow almost to bursting, yet instead of bursting, they enrich with imperceptible sounds and choirs.

The result is an inspired limbo, continuous, saturated. The almost Tool-esque perfection with which the album comes to light at times recalls the highest peaks of Nine Inch Nails, though they did not abandon the minimalist essence of old goth, they let us breathe it with wit and mastery as if wanting to keep us good to emerge among the sounds.

Just when we have put our souls at peace still in the same gothic cathedral, along with our friends, towards the end of the first CD and the scene change with the second, our friends begin to animate, like zombies, and we find the same pounding, raw, epic atmospheres of Sisters of Mercy, the untuned guitars of Joy Division, surrounded by electronic trends that do not damage the environment, the voracity of dark punk (an oxymoron that, with appropriate precautions, renders) of the early hypnosis. The Icelandic-style choir transforms into the deep, cavernous voice of Nick playing chess with death in the company of Eldritch. The confused and lethal crescendo accompanying "Waiting for Black Metal Record" to "I Don't Love", struggling between more acidic and corrosive sounds and ballads reminiscent of evoked liturgies, doesn't clash, nor does it fail, evoking ghosts reminiscent of Suicide.

The zombies with "I Don't Love" sit back down, among the mists of the same cathedral. The epilogue approaches triumphant and perhaps exhausted, and plucks the strings returning to the weltanschauung of this record full of shouting fathers and sons sealed by "The Future". "Earthmover" is the religious and brash farewell that keeps you glued inside the cathedral of "Deathconsciousness" for eleven minutes full of every well-assorted register, brilliant is the wink at 65dos, at the apocalyptic rides. Eleven minutes is the exact time for such a farewell.

Have a nice life, it might seem like a Righeira wish, but just listen to it all to realize they are bluffing brilliantly.

We can continue to find similarities, but I would limit myself to listening to it and keeping it safe until someone, in a few years, gives it a name by encasing it in some genre, or to find another one.