Fiddlehead – ‘Death Is Nothing To Us’ album review: A triumph in humanity
After releasing two stellar albums in 2018’s Springtime and Blind and 2021’s Between the Richness, punk supergroup Fiddlehead return with their full-length effort, Death Is Nothing To Us. Fronted by Have Heart vocalist Patrick Flynn and featuring Basement guitarist Alex Henery, the quintet continue their upwards trajectory on the new offering, with their formula refined and the music more impactful than ever before.
With Death Is Nothing To Us, the band have assembled a body of work that fuses their respective musical influences with the emotional intelligence that has always made Flynn such a compelling vocalist, capturing the fleeting nature of life.
Intelligent tales of fatherhood, life, love, death and grief are spun, ballasted by the verses of storied Roman poet Lucretius and the frontman’s breadth of lived experiences. Regarding Flynn’s lyrics, this collection of 12 songs is so powerful that they carry a universal substance despite being inextricable from his own life. This can be attributed to Flynn’s evident understanding of life’s machinations and his reading of Lucretius’ work On the Nature of Things, the ancient poem attempting to make sense of life from which the album’s title derives.
While the album is ostensibly a punk rock or alternative record, it constantly keeps the listener on their toes. This character, combined with Flynn’s meditative approach, creates a full-bodied offering that will no doubt be lapped up by fans as being another welcome chapter in their already compelling story.
“It’s totally different from our two other records in that our other records aren’t really clauses – this is just a statement,” Fylnn told Far Out in a new interview, explaining the album’s title and record’s meaning. “It was the perfect framing of what would become a type of lyrical mission for the band. In hindsight, what I’ve been striving for is not to be broken by the forces of grief. A statement like ‘Death is nothing to us’ is really not disparaging loss either; it’s saying life is where this is at.”
Death Is Nothing To Us starts with the thunderous 1-2-3-4 introduction of ‘The Deathlife’, which ranks among the most visceral songs Fiddlehead have produced. The music is blistering, with Henery and Alex Dow’s crunching guitars doing what they do best – dovetailing – as Shawn Costa’s drums and Nick Hinsch’s bass provide an appropriately muscular ballast. Whilst all the elements fly around the mix, Flynn screams so hard that it is easy to envision the veins pushing through his temples when laying this one down.
The record wastes no time segueing into the second stop, the single ‘Sleepyhead’. Another shorter track; musically, it’s more melodic than the opener. Henery and Dow’s guitars complement each other adroitly, with Flynn’s lyrics touching on opiate addiction and “the pain of the world and how it likes to hurt”. The vigour of the music and Flynn’s impassioned delivery make this one stand out. A luminous reflection of how the band channels collective emotion into an anthemic blend, ‘Sleepyhead’ doesn’t take long to lodge itself into the prefrontal cortex.
Whilst every song can be deemed impressive in its own right, ‘Welcome to the Situation’ is an undeniable highlight. It commences with the melodic bends of the guitars while Costa’s drums pound, linking up with the clang of Hinsch’s bass. After pulling us in, the track moves into a different rhythm, setting the scene for one of Flynn’s most immediate performances on Death Is Nothing To Us.
With no time for mincing his words, the frontman alerts the listener to the complex catastrophe unfolding in front of our eyes. Flynn sings about sea levels rising, deserts widening, democracy dying, and fathers being depressed. “So what you wanna say?” he screams after outlining the precipice humanity has pushed itself to as the record amps up in intensity, and Fiddlehead gets real.
Flynn explained that the song’s title is derived from Fugazi leader Ian MacKaye’s signed message to a newborn baby, but that the depth was inspired by “a lot of existential dread and bringing life into the world”. This is what Fiddlehead do best, adding a hefty dose of reality that underpins their emotion.
The final duo of tracks on Death Is Nothing To Us, however, is where things get more profound than previously heard in Fiddlehead’s oeuvre. Kicking off with the whammy bar-heavy strings bends reminiscent of Drop Nineteens, it is impossible to ignore for anyone lucky enough to be in a relationship with the age-old. Another moving number, underpinned by locomoting music, the honesty Flynn imbued here will see bodies fly at Fiddlehead’s shows as the communal catharsis takes another turn.
The verse, in which the frontman yells, “If I’m gonna die then I wanna die with you right by my side”, and later, “If Im gonna live then I wanna live with you right by my side”, encapsulates the essence of a song that expertly toes the line between rousing and melancholy. Whilst the track might well be about the relationship of Flynn’s mother and late father, again, a universal force exists here. It made me ponder my relationship, how lucky I am, and that of my mother and father, providing a deep trip into our own personal connections.
‘Going to Die’ perfectly brings the curtain down on Death Is Nothing To Us. Referring back to Flynn’s statement about the album title being about “life is where this is at”, this is the exhibit where that notion comes into play, and the grief is shed.
A counterbalance to the bleaker areas examined on the record, underpinned by a direct musical approach and the positivity of major chords, Flynn pays tribute to those in his life he has lost, his father, friends and heroes: “I got that attitude / the one that pulls me through the death and doom and gloom / so I will see you soon”. Then, after a rapid tour of his life, at the close, the final line, “See you on the other side”, is repeated for emphasis by the frontman and Henery as things slow down, driving the album’s motivations home.
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