In an age where modern music fetishises the two-piece band, it’s necessary for any avid music fan to understand what these groups are trying to replicate. The answer is most likely Death From Above. They grabbed the world by the balls when they released ‘You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine’ in 2004, their comeback ten years later, ‘The Physical World’ was adored worldwide for sticking to the group’s unique style of dance-infused punk and explosive attitude. With their third album, ‘Outrage! Is Now’ Death From Above have created an introspective record cynical about the oversensitive and easily manipulated narrative society has fallen into.
Punk and politics go hand in hand, even when the basslines are as sexy as they are in ‘Outrage! Is Now’. An element Death From Above have always utilised, raw sexuality is something omnipresent in old songs like ‘Romantic Rights’, ‘Pull Out’ and ‘Virgins’. ‘Never Swim Alone’ utilises the dark eroticism through spoken vocal rhythm building up to stadium-sized hell on the chorus featuring lyrics like “Valet park my hump machine, Backseat conceive, so unclean” contrasted by lines such as “There’s got to be another one coming, Another generation, Ready for the revolution.”
Death From Above pull it off. Lyrically, the album isn’t as much dark and carnal as it is pensive and furious. In this ten song record is a volley of balls to the wall riffs and a trail of destroyed drum kits. The momentum of the record starts and finishes at deafening levels, only dipping during the title track. Unlike in previous records where drawn back songs like ‘White on Red’ and ‘Black History Month’ received a mixed reaction from fans, ‘Outrage! Is Now’ gives vocalist and drummer Sebastien Grainger a platform to dig deeper. A universal highlight of the album.
Grainger has no problem letting his drums do the talking for him but this album is where he’s really shone through as a vocalist. Experimenting with the electronic sound of music and with bandmate Jesse Keeler writing more songs on the piano, it’s opened up the band’s repertoire and given Grainger an opportunity to comment on his frustration with the self-obsessed drones who are more concerned with talking about problems than solving them.
Filling the gaps between the anger are songs like ‘Nomad’ and the album’s lead single, ‘Freeze Me’. The latter is described by Grainger as a love song but sounds like the end of the world. A song put together by the band after Keeler sent a voice note of the piano part over to Grainger, it’s filled with anthemic bass lines juxtaposed by the sharp stabs from Keeler’s piano melody. The song keeps decibels high throughout but reaches a tipping point during the bridge where the heaviest riff of the record drowns out the piano and hits the listener in the gut.
“By your third album, I feel like you should be trying different things, whether subconsciously or consciously,” Keeler has said. For ‘Outrage! Is Now’ it feels more intentional than accidental. Throughout the bands first two albums it’s hard to pinpoint exact inspirations. You could make a guess at Lightning Bolt or The White Stripes but you’d be wrong. On this record, you can hear how Grainger and Keeler have been inspired. ‘Statues’ oozes Bowie with its warped chorus melody and shoegaze levels of reverb.
“The goal of the record was to expand the vocabulary a little bit, not to drastically change,” Grainger says of the new album. This applies heavily to songs like curtain-closer ‘Holy Books’. It’s a callback to ‘Heads Up’ and oozes a ‘fuck the world’ mentality. Basslines are dark and twisted but the lyrics aren’t talking about pulling out and doing cocaine anymore. It’s introspective and personal, an album for old fans, but something new listeners can immediately invest in.
MAX GAYLER