ALBUM REVIEW: The Death We Seek – Currents
CURRENTS are one of those bands that you feel a primal urge to tell people about. A band that you can really grab someone by the collar and yell about till you’re a royal blue, and their face is more familiar with your salvia. Yet, to an extent, their meteoric rise and ability to ensnare ears within 10 square kilometres of their music are rather confusing on paper. They tick the same boxes of chugging riffs, heart-wrenching choruses, face-tearing breakdowns and shades of melancholia that plenty of other bands of their DNA do, so why should CURRENTS’ waters travel any deeper? Being ‘special’ is a frustratingly abstract term but it’s the best answer to that question, and the best example of that answer is The Death We Seek – the album that turns CURRENTS’ gentle tug into an inescapable torrent.
A driver behind what makes the quintet feel so significant is the rate at which they’ve cemented themselves as a household name. Despite debuting just five years ago, CURRENTS have already taken strides as a stalwart figure in modern metal, offering welcome novelty to the ‘core’ community at a time when fans questioned the genre’s relative life expectancy – as far as innovation was concerned, anyway. But, through a mixture of MESHUGGAH’s complexity, VILDJHARTA’s atmospheric intensity, and some ARCHITECTS branded heart-tug hooks, CURRENTS began one of the genre’s quickest ascensions seen for years. It’s a sound that has brought them atop the stage, sharing blood, spit and riffs with title-boasting titans PARKWAY DRIVE, AUGUST BURNS RED and ICE NINE KILLS – it’s the success story every home-studio-bound newcomer dreams of.
What lifts them out of obscurity, from the gridlock traffic jam that is the wider metal scene, is still hard to define beyond that ‘unique CURRENTS touch’. 2023, however, brings more tangible proof. Enter The Death We Seek: the finest example of musical ferocity produced by anyone for a long, long time. It’s a hefty statement but believe the words you read, this is the record the genre has been aching for. CURRENTS have written songs for the apocalypse, a stainless, ten-stroke blast of eye-widening, ear-popping beauty that takes psychotic pleasure in dragging you across its broken glass floors and rubbing salt in your wounds; all whilst attacking your emotional fragility, grinding stone hearts to soddened rubble.
This has always been the band’s M.O – beating you senseless and your senses, like the world’s most counter-productive therapist – but their newest entry goes far beyond the torment we’re used to. Their bitter soundscape of sewage-ridden riffs and weighty electronics – that buzz and screech amongst the fury – has grown to tectonic levels of weight. It’s an indulgent boiling pot where the worlds of hardcore, metalcore, prog metal and deathcore can run riot in staggering symphony. With such a plosive palette, The Death We Seek offers countless face-scrunching moments of filth strewn across its wastelands, from the title track’s opening charge, So Alone’s unflinching breakdown, or the vice grip of Living In Tragedy’s colossal main groove. Three albums in and CURRENTS have not run out of ways to dismantle minds with their sheer weight.
On the other side of the coin is something perhaps more tricky, a facet that demands something harder to obtain than a hankering for caving-in ear canals; the ability to appear genuine. Thanks to the boundless creativity of songwriter and vocalist Brian Wille, The Death We Seek is littered with moments of genuine heart, not least thanks to Wille’s immense performances throughout, and a clearly-defined, relatable emotive pull – be it a plight of self-doubt or an unhinged thirst for blood. The greatest example is Remember Me. A firm contender for the album’s best inclusion and one of the strongest songs of the year, Wille’s harrowed cries, screaming out into a vacuum of disconnect forged by the inherent social division of the pandemic are so bitterly familiar. Any listener will find great challenge in distancing themselves from the most metal group therapy session of the year.
CURRENTS have levelled their own playing field with unfaltering conviction. Besting themselves, contemporaries, and pretty much anything that is in their path, The Death We Seek brings a new standard to the word music. It’s fast, and sinister but also profound and understanding, and it makes the future of this brilliant set of musicians one of the most exciting prospects in music to this day.
Rating: 9/10
The Death We Seek is set for release on May 5th via SharpTone Records.
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