genres: black metal + post-rock + dream-pop
Black metal and beauty don’t go together often. Many would say they fundamentally never should. Even Deafheaven’s genre breaking Sunbather was an abrasive, mostly inaccessible wall of sound cloaked in unusually bright tones. And yet, Try Not to Destroy Everything you Love is undeniably a beautiful record. Lo-fi guitars and overcompressed vocals are buried under an absolute deluge of warm and bright synth work, creating a lush atmospheric experience that is both soothing and utterly devastating. There’s not a ton of differentiation among the individual tracks, though each is certainly distinctive. The album functions as a singular piece of music, floating through varied organic soundscapes (though if looking for a single track .
Although the sonic elements have clear roots in black metal, the compositions share more in common with the dream-pop derivatives of shoegaze or post-rock in that they attempt to form sonic journeys through the natural world (and of course, nature is a key theme for other black metal subgenres as well, but those don’t really seem to be in AAFCC’s lineage). It’s hear where the emotive strength of all varied elements comes crashing together to full effect. The soaring celebration and exuberance of cinematic post-rock crashes violently into the darker corners of the raw metal elements at the bottom of the mix. This ultimately serves to make the climactic summits of the album all the more transcendent, as there’s real weight being wrestled with, and ultimately overcome.
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