Everything's Dead

There is always reason to celebrate a release from the Dead Brothers. Funeral music for civilization and then some. 

Angst came out four years ago this month and it has never been more timely. Voodoo Rhythm Records, again, put it out. The band is one of the label's mainstays. This time around, Marcus Aurelius Littler, whom I interviewed years ago for Z Magazine, has lent his hand to the proceedings. What follows is a soulful, sinful album that is the perfect thing for lonely, rainy nights were nothing is going right and nothing is looking to change. The world spins on the edge of fascism and in the arms of a pandemic.

You could guess there are 13 songs here. Not a single loser in the bunch, either. I know. How can that be? It's impossible, you say. It's not. Not if you heard this band before. Not if you are paying attention. Paying attention while the world burns.

The press release from years ago states that "we are standing at the edge of the end times." Catastrophe is so near you can smell it. It was with this in mind that the Dead Brothers hid in the Vosges Mountains to "take the pulse of our time." It seems the band read it right. This is the perfect accompaniment to the end times. The end of all things. They just knew it was coming four years ago. 

Do not think it is all doom and gloom, though. Hardly. This is a celebration of the end. A party that is a wake. This is what should be playing as the planet stops spinning and the sun flares outward to consume us. This lets us expire with smiles on our faces. 

Song eight. "Did We Fail?" Probably one of the best songs the band has written, and it has written some amazing tunes. This one haunts in all the right ways, though. It asks a question that is the ultimate question of humanity. Did we fail, or did we even try? Littler wrote it. It's appropriate of him and of this band. It is the zenith of both their existences. It is everything both stand for. This song, more than any other Dead Brothers song, examines everything that ever existed and that which has yet to be born. It is as painful to hear as it is to think about, and that song is sublime.

We did fail. We didn't even try. 

But not the Dead Brothers. Failure is not something the band knows. And it doesn't even have to try.