Death Song

All told, Death Song might be their finest hour.

On Death Song, their greatest strength is harnessing the aesthetic they’ve worked for more than a decade to refine, and it’s as rich and powerful as they’ve ever sounded.

Death Song (their first album in four years and one whose title neatly appends their name to the VU classic that first inspired them) is their heaviest to date, a toxic draught of garage-rock and booming psychedelia that buzzes with echo and reverb.

Pleasingly, following a hit-and-miss attempt to incorporate more whimsical strains of psychedelia into their sound on 2013’s Indigo Meadow, their fifth album marks a return to the threatening drones that made their first two so powerful.

Their most socially aware record yet. Whether they address political issues, genocides (both historic and contemporary) or anxieties caused by alienation or inability to cope with the overwhelming pace of the 21st century, the band smoothly blends the beautiful with the ugly. In between the loud, razor wired guitar attack you also get lovely picked chords or bouncy bass lines.

Death Song isn't a wild step in any new direction but instead a grindstone-polished showcase of what the group does best. [No.142, p.52]

Death Song confirms there’s no end to the kinds of hurt and frustration that can be channeled into its cathartic music.

The more spacious likes of "Comanche Moon" and "Life Song" suggest an ambition to nail a headline spot at the UFO Club, which may not boast much novelty a half-century after the fact, but can still elicit a contact high. [Jun 2017, p.23]