A Hero's Death

With poetry suffusing both lyrics and music, Fontaines DC capture being young in all its excitement and challenges, its confidence and despair: those years where it feels like you’re trying to find a foothold with your hands. It’s not easy, but then what great album, or life, ever is?

Rather than succumb to difficult second album syndrome, Fontaines D.C. have emerged frontrunners in an already crowded field of vital, important young bands. A Hero's Death is a resounding victory. [Aug 2020, p.100]

This is a second album that builds upon the foundations they’ve laid so far and opens up their world to all manner of possibilities. If ‘Dogrel’ promised that Fontaines DC were gonna be big, it’s with ‘A Hero’s Death’ that they prove they were worth the hype all along.

Subversive, non-conformist and melodious, this record has the credentials of a classic rock and roll album. The decision to take a radical approach only works for the few, the possession of ammunition that’s needed to master such a challenge is not for anyone. Fontaines D.C. have it.

This is a powerful, brave and endlessly rewarding album made by a band who have risked it all to make a giant leap towards fulfilling their potential.

This is exactly the type of ambition you want to hear from a young band. After making such a peppy, instant classic debut, they weren’t intimidated by the thought of a Sunday stroll album, and they reached newfound emotional and sonic heights in making one.

Memorable tunes and unforgettable phrases erupt like brush fire over the course of 47 minutes, the mood migrating at a moment’s notice from insouciant nihilism to full-blown rage to radical empathy.

Though falling short of revelatory, a few rotations of A Hero’s Death brings some good news. Outgrowing Joy Division and overblown inverted paddywhackery, it’s a largely nuanced and, most blessedly of all, believable affair.

Many of Fontaines’ key traits remain: the ability of this young Dublin outfit to retread familiar post-punk ground but with a tensile urgency all their own; and the sardonic Irish tones of Grian Chatten, whose affected blankness speaks volumes.

The propulsive spark that lit their debut lingers, keeping the record from drifting off into malaise.

It’s a relief then, to find that – despite Fontaines DC’s own misgivings – they still have plenty more of note to say.

Sophisticated follow-up. [Aug 2020, p.83]

In aiming to examine the self rather than please others, Fontaines D.C. have exerted a knack for writing anthems that are at once self-excoriating and intimately relatable.

It's darker and more complex than their debut, but also bigger-sounding. [Sep 2020, p.80]

Introspective and tightly wound. [Sep 2020, p.26]

Dogrel showed Fontaines D.C. could make a great post-punk album; A Hero’s Death shows they have more than sub-genre affiliation on their minds.

A Hero's Death is not about growth: it's a band assessing where they stand as rising up-and-comers and having the impulse to express themselves differently. Maybe their sulking comes with a bit of affectation, but at least it's a convincing portrait of keeping true to themselves—soaking in everything that surrounds them.

It is missing the stable spine that gave the band’s earlier work such distinctive character, and their repetitious, two-dimensional songs bring the overall package down. Still, when the band is at its best, Fontaines D.C. delivers an irresistible cocktail of post-punk storytelling.

Although A Hero's Death does suffer from repetition and a lack of literacy, it remains a fun enough; the mistakes it makes won't deter existing fans of the band, although it doesn't display anything new or exciting enough to propel Fontaines D.C. to any new heights.

The problem with A Hero's Death isn't that the band's changed, exactly; it's that the way they've changed makes them sound less like themselves and more like the many other young, angry guitar bands they're often lumped together with. The fact that they're unafraid to defy expectations so early in their career is a good thing. Hopefully, they'll realize it doesn't have to come at the expense of what makes them unique.

Chatten’s monotone downtrodden vocals with direct lyrics (not going much deeper than their titles) dominate the songs. This style will either pull in the listener or alienate as the woe is me gloom follows each song like a small rain cloud.