London slowcore/post-rock quartet deathcrash will follow up last year’s debut album Return with a new record called Less, arriving on March 17 through untitled (recs). The album was recorded at the UK’s most remote studio in the Outer Hebrides and vocalist Tiernan Banks says:
“The mission statement was to be super minimal. Just simple and beautiful guitar parts and to be really bare. To be….less.”
The first taste of the more minimal approach is “Empty Heavy”, a song that bassist Patrick Fitzgerald introduces by saying: “‘Empty heavy’ is an intricately melancholic song that gives way to a direct and explosive ending. This is reflected by the different states of loss portrayed lyrically through the song.”
A mournful track that offers Banks an opportunity to use his gorgeous whisper voice to express interiority and quiet reckonings with loss and distance. The song is all glowing embers and dramatic shadows until the passion burns over and becomes a stomach-turning pyre of regret and catharsis. It’s both classic deathcrash and a further honing of their sweeping dynamics.
On the video for “Empty Heavy”, Fitzgerald says: “When we filmed the video for this, there was a similar atmosphere. We had been working so intensely on the album that we’d barely even left the confines of the studio since we had arrived. Every day we spent a lot of time carefully crafting, whether it was Kaye’s artwork or our music. For the video we got to step out of the studio, set it all on fire and just watch it burn together. It was a release for all of us, and brought us closer together. Like the ending of the song here is something powerfully satisfying in giving up and letting go, even if just for a moment.”
Watch the clip below or find “Empty Heavy” on streaming platforms.
deathcrash’s new album Less arrives on March 17 through untitled (recs). You can catch them on Bandcamp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
