Track of the Week: Deathcrash return with ‘Triumph’, which is exactly as it promises
Every time London foursome Deathcrash emerge with material, it sounds as though something is on the verge of coming to a cataclysmic end, so it feels strange to talk of the band ushering in a new era, essentially celebrating new life being brought into the world.
Following the rapid-fire release of their first two albums, 2022’s Return, and More, which arrived barely a year later, the slowcore outfit have chosen to bide their time and make audiences wait for a third album. With ‘Triumph’, we’re dealt a first taste of what the band have been cooking up during their two-year absence, and unusually for them, there appear to be flickers of hope eking out from under the thick layers of gloom that tend to cloud their sound.
Granted, ‘Triumph’ is far from being easy-listening, and touches on some raw subject matter such as grief, heartbreak, and the crushing despair that comes with realising it isn’t possible to fix the past, but what it does offer is resolve and catharsis in coming to terms with moving on from previous mistakes. Where Deathcrash have often allowed themselves to ruminate on the darker internal thoughts, ‘Triumph’ takes after its title and quells those intruding concerns.
Where previous songs from the band tend to operate around lengthy structures that are stretched to their limits and tease out their crescendos, ‘Triumph’ is a lot more direct in its approach and sees them immediately enter into a cacophony of sludgy emo riffs. Deathcrash are no longer playing the long game; they want you to know they’re there in an instant.
While Duster and Unwound may seem like obvious points of reference, there’s no shame in taking cues from the acts that created the blueprint for pummelling and despair-filled post-rock, and while you could argue the case that Deathcrash are torchbearers for acts like this, they’re also staking a reasonable claim for becoming a touchstone slowcore acts of the future.
Not only is ‘Triumph’ a tremendous snapshot of what Deathcrash are capable of, but it highlights just how impactful they can still be when choosing urgency over delayed gratification. Whether or not their future full-length project continues to find them in this vein or not is irrelevant, but it’s refreshing to know that they can deliver in this manner and have it work just as well.
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