Dan and Tim delivered exactly what I wanted with their second record and cemented themselves as one of my favorite bands of all time.įavorite Songs: “Burial Society”, “Emptiness Will Eat the Witch”, “Music Will Untune the Sky” Overall, I know it’s early in the year, but I really don’t know if another album will be able to top The Unnatural World as my favorite release of 2014. Despite this slightly annoying detail, I’m a huge fan of Have a Nice Life’s low-fi, hazy production style, but it can probably deter some people that prefer less fuzzy music. The rough, DIY production also might throw some people off, and one of my very few complaints with the album is that it ends in the middle of the final note, even on the physical release. At 47 minutes, it’s not the huge, sprawling experience that Deathconsciousness was, but to some, The Unnatural World’s more standard run time may be a lot easier to handle. Have a Nice Life is one of my favorite bands, and they delivered everything I wanted with The Unnatural World. Finally, the album closes with the darkly quiet “Emptiness Will Eat the Witch” which gives the album a feeling of hopeless closure with the final line repeated over and over: “You are no one.” “Cropsey” features a disturbing sample of an interview with a mentally ill child from the 1968 documentary Suffer the Little Children that investigated the controversial Pennhurst mental institution.
This track is followed by the slow, soaring “Music Will Untune the Sky” which has some incredible vocal harmony and awesome, droning guitar effects. The repetition of “oh, I wish I was alive” on the first track, “Guggenheim Wax Museum”, was enough to set the dark mood of the album, and on “Burial Society”, Dan screams the chorus of “Cut my wrists, slit my throat, take this body and string it up” in one of the darkest Have a Nice Life songs yet. These worries were quickly dismissed as soon as I listened through this record for the first time.ĭepressing music isn’t for everyone, but for those who love hearing an artist’s raw, dark feelings coming through in their music like I do, The Unnatural World is incredible. As darkly selfish as this is, I was afraid that this would make The Unnatural World uncharacteristically brighter. Dan Barrett created some equally dark solo material under the name Giles Corey after a failed suicide attempt, but after lamenting that “no one ever going to want ”, he pulled himself together emotionally and is now married.
THE UNNATURAL WORLD HAVE A NICE LIFE FULL
After the incredible experience that was Deathconsciousness, I was somewhat worried about what Have a Nice Life would have in store with their second full length album. With their debut 2008 album Deathconsciousness, they created an 86-minute masterpiece of swirling darkness and depression. This Connecticut-based two piece band comprised of Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga hasn’t really gotten a whole lot of commercial recognition, but those who know of them know that their dark post-punk/shoegaze/industrial sound is unmatched and unsurpassed. Listen to it loud.If any band was to compose the soundtrack to the end of the world, it would be Have a Nice Life. In fact getting around to actually put my thoughts down has been a difficult task to accomplish.” – Last on Our Listĥ years after Deathconsciousness, Dan and Tim return with The Unnatural World, a tightly-wired exploration of the post-punk, industrial, and doom-fusion sound that they helped to popularize. “‘The Unnatural World’ by Have a Nice Life is quite possibly the most overwhelming album to have come out this year. “It’s literally flawless.” – Anti-Gravity Bunny The soundtrack to a slow sink into the ground.” – Decoy
THE UNNATURAL WORLD HAVE A NICE LIFE PLUS
Plus drone, plus doom, plus cold-wave, plus post-punk, wintry yet intimate. “Have a Nice Life have perfected a sort of industrial shoegaze. “hums with the overblown quiver of industrial percussion, the gasps of desperate reverb, and distant, elongated, harmonized vocals.” – Alarm Magazine
“For such dark music, The Unnatural World is addictively melodic. “…massive in its scope, with production that reflects the heft of the material more than ever.” – NPR Instead it moves, and moves others with it.” – Pitchfork “Sinuous instead of rigid, bloody instead of embalmed, the album refuses to be frozen in time or place.
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