Record #952: Fiddlehead – Death is Nothing to Us (2023)

By now, it’s become pretty apparent that Fiddlehead has overcome every curse that befalls supergroups. While many similar groups are crushed by the weight of their own hype before their first record, Fiddlehead continues to get better.

Death Is Nothing To Us continues the band’s penchant for observing grief through a lens of fist-pumping, emotional post-hardcore, but this time around, they magnify the nuance of both their sound and mourning to subatomic detail.

The first two Fiddlehead records felt very much like two halves of the same record—partially due to the short running time, but mostly due to the fact that they were largely intended to operate this way. Between the Richness was intended as a sequel, continuing the narrative that was begun on Springtime and Blind, which saw Patrick Flynn (of Have Heart) examining the loss of his father through his mother’s grief and his own.

And while some might expect that loss to have dulled some in the five years since their debut, grief is rarely linear. The taste of the loss might not linger as sharply in your mouth, but the dull ache of absence never really fades. You might not notice it as often as you learn to live with it, but you can only ignore its nagging for so long. Death is Nothing to Us is the third chapter of this trilogy, and it spends most of its time examining the quiet, unexpected moments when grief rears its head again, and it does so with such clarity that anyone who has suffered such a loss can see their own bereavement in it.

This subtlety is especially present in the musicianship too. Where the angular guitar parts (half of which are played by Alex Henery of Basement) and half-shouted vocals are still buoyed by an urgent rhythm section, there is a greater depth to the arrangements this time around. This is especially true of “Give It Time (II),” a cycling meditation on the tedium of recovery set to the quietest Fiddlehead track to date. But even the louder tracks are poignant and cutting. “Fiddleheads” offers up a Fugazi-esque bass line with the declaration “I don’t want to just get by.”

The real talent Fiddlehead possesses though is their ability to combine all of these elements with a pop sensibility that creates some of the most irresistible music to come out of the hardcore scene in a while. For all of the lyrics of grief, shouted vocals, and hardcore ethos, these songs are nothing if not catchy. They’re catchy enough that you might completely ignore the subject matter for a while until you find yourself unexpectedly smacked across the face by it. And that’s not unlike what living with grief can feel like. Whether Fiddlehead continues this narrative or changes gears on future releases, you can bet it’s going to be some of the most exciting, infectious rock music around.