Have a Nice Life
The Unnatural World

Six years ago, the unexpected hit with the debut turned into the underground cult "Deathconsciousness" (the one with "The Death of Marat" by neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David on the cover). An imperfect record, but one that made Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga, two guys from Connecticut, one of the most talked-about bands of that year. The Have A Nice Life.

Just last autumn they came back to announce their return to the scene. A return that is a true sonic assault retracing the last thirty years of music. "The Unnatural World", the brand new and highly anticipated second work of the band, has raised the music level of Have A Nice Life by many notches.

Just listen to the seismic "Defenestration Song" to understand that the two American musicians are not kidding at all. The assertive bass breaks through and creates a sonic vortex combining the lead-heavy post-punk of Joy Division, the hypnotic industrial of Nine Inch Nails, and the zombie-like no-wave of Swans. A deadly danse macabre in the gloomy disco of hell.

Haunted by the ghost of Ian Curtis, "Burial Society" flows slowly among rivers of tar and acid rain. A background keyboard that would fit well in the darkest Massive Attack song, with a shouted vocal that reaches our ears distant and muffled, as if it were the voice of a decaying corpse buried and in search of redemption.

And if the carpet of penetrating and insistent drones in "Music Will Untune The Sky" almost make us hope for a less dark and more ambient moment, the following "Cropsey" returns to unsettle us. Dan Barrett's voice (founder and vocalist of the band) appears surrounded by cavernous echoes and neurotic bursts of gothic electronics. It almost seems like listening to an evil version of The Cure, a track that could be included in the tracklist of Disintegration without appearing out of place.

In the scarce three minutes of "Unholy Life" you'd wish time could pause forever. Listening to this track means being overwhelmed by a vortex of emotions of rare intensity. The Sonic Youth's noise and the shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine are multiplied and layered, spun together and then sped up. Immersed in the darkness of a winter night like this, the track on loop, I feel every synapse of my brain dazed and hypnotized by the rocky beauty of this piece.

The journey into the unnatural world of Have A Nice Life concludes with "Emptiness Will Eat The Witch", nine minutes of catharsis. Nine minutes where the atmosphere becomes more rarefied and spiritual thanks to the organ whispering in the background and the gently strummed guitar. An ending that does not devastate or hurt with unheard-of violence, but that penetrates into the bones with its placid darkness and its wavering hopefulness.

After the great debut in 2008, the Americans Have A Nice Life have returned more confident, more prepared, more powerful. The Unnatural World trims away what was superfluous in the first album, refines the sound bringing it to the brink of perfection. An album that will be difficult to forget and that will rightfully enter the small great cults of this mortally dark and unnatural decade.