By now, long time readers will understand that I have an incredible weakness for heavy music that plays with more delicate elements. My collection is filled with these sorts of experiments, from Alcest to Zeal & Ardor—projects that hold tight to the crushing catharsis of heavy metal, but don’t shy away from adopting a sense of gentleness.
An Autumn For Crippled Children’s breakthrough album, Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love is an absolutely staggering example of this kind of music that is equal parts ear splittingly vicious and heart throbbingly sentimental.
As members of the blackgaze movement, pioneered by Alcest and popularized by Deafheaven’s Sunbather, An Autumn For Crippled Children fill their sonic palette with plenty of conventions of black metal. Shrieked vocals and amp-blowing tremolo guitar are par for the course. However, that church-burning atmosphere is paired with a surprising slathering of of synths, drum machines, and even grand pianos that are reminiscent of the sentimentality of many 80s new wave bands. I’ve heard A Year of No Light described as “The Cure of heavy metal” before, but that description is absolutely more apt for this album than anything AYNL did.
This is AAFCC’s fourth album, and fifth release overall, so it should come as no surprise that they’ve mastered the careful alchemy of combining these disparate elements. Across nine tracks, this record is consistently engaging and always, always stunningly beautiful.
“Autumn Again” opens the record with a driving drum groove and synthesized strings. It almost sounds like New Order worship until the guitars and shrieks come in. But somehow, it doesn’t feel as jarring as it sounds on paper. Instead, it’s almost comforting. “Never Complete” pulls back to a more subdued pace, the glacial drums and cacophony of electric guitars softened by layers of saw tooth synth leads and analog pads.
The title track is heavy on the clean elements, opening with a section of gentle keys and drum machine augmented by clean guitars and a mangled spoken word sample of a woman crying before going to the aural onslaught of guitars and screams, this time aided by a beautiful piano arpeggio. It’s followed by “Hearts of Light,” which stays high on the volume throughout, but puts the almost disgustingly distorted guitar parts through an absolutely beautiful chord progression, once again accompanied by a gorgeous piano line.
“Sepia Mountains for Her Lament” opens the B side with a standalone piano, bouncing between chords with a delicate grace before becoming one of the heaviest songs on the record. But not even its double kicked drum parts, fuzzed bass, and shrieked vocals are enough to keep this song to being beautiful. “Closer” hurries with a rushed pace and a spiraling guitar part that yearns with desperation. Their mastery of unusual combinations is made plain when the guitar completely drops out and is replaced by a piano without feeling like a detour. The piano ascends through the same chord changes alongside a light but frantic rhythm section, capturing the exact same mood as the guitars at full volume.
After an entire album spent juxtaposing aggressive and delicate elements, closer “Starlit Spirits” encapsulates the purest of both ends of the spectrum. The closing minutes feature both the most visceral of their black metal and the most spectacularly intricate piano parts on the record—often at the same time.
As someone who came back to heavy music through Sunbather, Try Not to Destroy Everything You Love is the exact kind of album I was hoping was hidden behind the door that Deafheaven opened for me. Equal parts lush and crushing, punishing and heartbreaking. It is one of the purest fulfillments of the promise that Sunbather gave when it showed me just how gorgeous metal can be. And in perhaps the purest of tests, my wife—who does not like screamy music at all—did not object at all when I put this one (perhaps intrigued by my description of a heavy metal Cure). Instead, she idly hummed along and tapped her foot as it played in our living room. It might not seem like much, but that’s as close to a seal of approval as any metal band will get from her.