Album Review: A Hero's Death

I dunno, I've never really been excited when the marketing pitch for a new album is "it's like the old album, but slower and darker." I get that there's value in that, but if my favorite song from the old album got me capital-e Excited, then maybe sometimes I just want more of that. But I also understand that that's me being selfish. It's not what I want. It's what the band wants. And Fontaines D.C., this time around, wants you to know that they are in a bad place.

I don't really know what it's like for a passion to become so life-consuming that you start to hate that passion. It's fun to think about what it would be like to be a professional touring musician, but if that actually ever happened, I'm sure it would turn into the monotony that A Hero's Death describes it as. "I don't belong to anyone" goes the koan of the opening track, and the despair is just dripping off the thing.

It was almost unfair for Fontaines D.C. to describe this album as "like the Beach Boys," because that would've been interesting. It's not true (except for maybe the warped "bah bah!" at the end of the title track). Instead, we get what's probably the opposite of the Beach Boys. This is the album that meets you in an alleyway, collar up, switchblade open in a flash. It pulses with a dark energy. Joy seems far away—"Living in America" never seemed so bleak.

There is very little on this album that sounds like "Boys in the Better Land," and I think that's the point. Cockiness means nothing when you belong to no one. Unfortunately, that means I don't get to feel cocky too when I listen to it. I get to instead follow the band into a dark hall of mirrors, and I'm finding that it's taking me a long time to get to the exit. "A Lucid Dream" could be "Boys in the Better Land" in one of those dark mirrors, with the guitars all going down the scale, creating a sincere sense of doom, and man... I just don't even know how to respond to any of this.

But I am intrigued. This is not Dogrel. It doesn't want to be. This means that I am not immediately enthralled. But the more I listen, the more I find myself wanting to return to it again, and again, and again. This isn't going to be one of my favorite albums of the year, but again—it doesn't want to be. A Hero's Death wants me to know that I am the problem. Now here's how to fix it.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5