Two years ago, the great Boston post-hardcore band Fiddlehead released Between The Richness, their extremely powerful sophomore album. Fiddlehead don’t tour, and they don’t play many live shows. The members of the band are busy people with jobs and families, and they have made it clear that they can’t be full-time musicians. So it was a little surprising when they announced that they had another album ready to go. That LP is called Death Is Nothing To Us, and it’s out today. It’s fucking awesome.
In Fiddlehead, Pat Flynn, former Have Heart leader and current high-school teacher, sings about extremely heavy subjects — things like the death of his father and his own lifelong battle with depression. On Death Is Nothing To Us, the music gets a little heavier and more physical — closer to the cathartic hardcore of the band members’ roots — and the lyrics get even more bruising and intense. Flynn spends much of the record singing about the struggle to find reasons to remain tethered to life. It’s deep, and it’s meaningful.
Fiddlehead recorded Death Is Nothing To Us with Chris Teti, leader of The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. Justice Tripp, leader of Trapped Under Ice and Angel Du$t, guests on “True Hardcore (II),” a song about the desperate search for meaning and companionship in music and subculture. That’s the one that’s really hitting for me this morning, though every song on the album has that kind of raw emotional force. We’ve posted the early tracks “Sullenboy,” “Sleepyhead,” and “Fifteen To Infinity,” and now I would strongly recommend that you stream the full LP below.
Death Is Nothing To Us is out now on Run For Cover Records. Read our 2021 feature on Fiddlehead here.