Love Exchange Failure

This was recommended to me by a buddy of mine who listens almost exclusively to DSBM. I usually associate Debemur Morti with more abstract, dissonant and complex bands like Blut Aus Nord and Akhlys, so the post-rocky edge to this was a bit surprising. Nonetheless, the darkjazz touches add the necessary weirdness for this to fit the label fine. This also isn’t entirely DSBM, although it’s the closest thing we’re probably going to get to a professional representation of the genre in 2019 (now that QCBM absorbed all of the key elements of that sub-niche of black metal, anyways). Even without that designation though Love Exchange Failure is very, very bleak, moreso in the metallic sections than the melancholic acoustic stuff, which is much more difficult to accomplish without abusing dissonance or Mgla-style arpeggios. That being said, this doesn’t have quite the anguish or recklessness that a DSBM album has. This is a much more elegant affair than the Make a Change...Kill Yourselfs of the world, with the organic-sounding, energetic drumming, comparatively less repetition, and some rippin’ saxophone to top it all off.

This kind of shit is right up my alley, but that’s never a given that the resulting music is going to be great. Aesthetic isn’t even half the battle, song structure is everything, especially with the grandiose and climactic nature of post-black. Sunbather is perhaps the most egregious example of this, at least in my personal opinion (I understand it’s a flagship album of sorts for the style). The textures and riffs are there, but the structuring is off and as a result the gravity of the styles being blended is lost. The give-and-take between instruments and overall execution of Love Exchange Failure is a major reason for its success compared to its peers. Despite the album cover’s depiction of a modern cityscape, this album’s sense of depression feels a bit…older. Like an elderly chainsmoker starting out of one of those apartment windows as opposed to a more emotionally intense and chaotic sadness. Maybe I’m just giving the saxophone too much of the credit for the atmosphere…but god DAMN that thing sounds fine. It’s very frequently present but always comes in at the right times and never tries to show off too much, instead preferring to play long, slow, soulful notes with lots of delicate breathiness. The keyboards and other non-guitar-based melodies are all integrated in a fascinating way. I’ve been a Bohren & der Club of Gore fan for a bit, and it’s refreshing to hear a metal band finally incorporate the style in a way that doesn’t feel forced or like a last-minute idea that the band got after hearing a Tom Waits album. Love Exchange Failure has fantastic dynamics, with the stretched-out ambiance being equally as engaging as the riffs - and when the riffs do kick in, they make up for their absence by going hard, either obliterating you with speed and melodic intensity or crashing into an almost-hardcore-inspired postblack groove. With a bit of delicious sax sprinkled on top, of course, just to keep you nice and wet.

The trap that a lot of post-black falls into is only operating on two settings: cathartic, blasting semi-black metal and lush, atmospheric buildup. White Ward understand the importance of the in between - if they repeat a riff more than a couple times they’ll make sure to switch up the drumbeat so they can approach the riff from a different angle, and the black metal, smooth jazzy stuff, and despondent post-hardcore edge all weave in and out of the music constantly, making the larger-scale transitions in the songs feel way more natural. This album covers a lot of ground, and very successfully so at that. They vary in tempo more frequently than bands in the genre typically do, and the undeniable natural talent of the drummer elevates the depth of even the barest riffs (can you imagine if this had programmed drums? I barely can and it really isn’t pleasant). The album cover might bring Lifelover’s Erotik to mind, but this is far from a broken, drug-addled tribute to sadness, this is a powerful, all-encompassing hopelessness that makes you want to destroy everything around you, including yourself. There’s been a lot of solid black metal releases put out this year, but I’m struggling to think of anything as thoroughly well-composed that’s captivated me to the degree that Love Exchange Failure has. Benton, if you’re reading this, thank you for the rec, and if Haunter didn't exist this would probably be favorite black metal album of the year.

It's impossible to talk about post-black metal nowadays without referencing Deafheaven it seems. Like it or not, Sunbather was an absolute game changer in modern metal history, bucking the established aesthetics of the genre in a way that was bold and definitive. It opened the door for legions of hipsters and music snobs to appreciate metal music stripped of all the kitsch and laid itself emotionally bare in such a way that it made traditional metalheads violently uncomfortable. A lot of old school types didn't like it, and that's fine, it wasn't for them. I liked it a lot, but I feel like I respect it more than I actually like it. It was a watershed moment that inverted so many metal tropes that to this day people question its black metal credentials despite the abundance of blast beats and hypnotic tremolo riffs underneath screeching vocals. The musical elements were all there, but the added shoegaze and major key carefree nostalgia of the whole thing was just so different that I think a lot of people didn't really know what to do with it, myself included.

And without Sunbather, I wager there'd be no Love Exchange Failure, so for that I have to thank Deafheaven eternally. White Ward's sophomore album is the exact kind of thing I'd always wanted to experience but never knew I wanted to. I decided a while ago that metal culture fucking sucks and I would've abandoned all of you dorks years ago if I didn't love the music so much, so an album like Love Exchange Failure hits me in a cockle so deeply embedded in a shriveled black stalactite that was once my heart. Classics be damned, tradition be buggered, if this is the future of the genre I love, I am all aboard.

All you really need to know is that I find a clear parallel between this and Deafheaven's breakout album, and the album cover paints a picture so vivid that I felt like I knew this album on a personal level before I had even heard it. Metal isn't a very "urban" genre, and I mean that in the sense that it's usually thematically centered around nature, fantasy, the occult, escapism, war, violent death, just generally things you won't find underneath well lit skyscrapers, ya know? Love Exchange Failure is black metal presented at its most romantic without losing sight of the negativity that the genre dwells in so deeply. Cities are a confounding thing to me. By definition you have more people than you could ever count all living and coexisting in one space, interconnected by the greatest feats of modern engineering and architecture that the brightest minds of their eras could conjure, they are very clearly connected. And yet, they're the loneliest places in the world. Being isolated in a cabin hundreds of miles from civilization lets you be at one with yourself or with nature, but the white noise of a metropolis completely blocks you from such a spiritual experience. You are surrounded by people, hundreds of thousands of them, millions even, and yet not a single person knows or cares about one another. There is something gorgeously ironic about such an open air prison, surrounded by life and yet completely lost within yourself. The sights around you are beautiful, and yet it's a concrete labyrinth of lights hazily illuminating nothing but decay and misery all around you. So full, so lonely. It's breathtaking, it's serene, it's the worst place in the world.

The dark splendor of urban isolation is on full display here musically, with long stretches of unobtrusive piano and smooth saxophone creating backdrops for lonely walks in the small hours of the morning, punctuated by loud, violent cries of agony. The lion's share of material here is unabashedly metal, but that bitterly ironic twinkling sweetness never truly dissipates. Even during the blasting and screeching, the quiet melodies of the piano and sax never stop. The saxophone can probably be argued to be nothing more than a gimmick to help the band stand out, the same criticism Rivers of Nihil got last year with Where Owls Know My Name, but hell even if it is a gimmick it stands out in a wonderful way. I don't think I realized how much I loved the sound of a saxophone until I heard White Ward, but now that I've heard it in a metal context where it doesn't clash so sharply, I want it to be as standard as a guitar. I don't think it adds a new dimension as much as it fills a space I didn't realize was empty. Atmoblack is a melodic genre, no doubt, but the melodies are always subtle and more implied than outright stated, flittering in the background, but the addition of the sax here gives those drawn out melodies a more active counterpoint, cutting through the cliche'd bullshit and grabbing you by the ear, pulling your face towards a dead homeless woman and demanding you weep for the tragedy of somebody dying for and with nothing when surrounded by opulence. It sings defiant songs of agony and despair in a space of cold, unfeeling misery.

I do my best to adhere to the Death of the Author theory, and that is because the beauty of art is that it can be interpreted more than understood. I've read the lyrics here, most of them seem to be about a person trying to find meaning in a miserable world via murder, with some allusions to existential thought and I think some vague idea of using the violent nature of mankind to sow something natural in a place where nothing is, and while that's also great, it's not what I get out of Love Exchange Failure. Instead, I feel what I described earlier. Isolation, loneliness, the bitter smirk on the face of a lonely man surrounded by thousands of equally lonely people who will never even think about one another. This sounds like the last moments of a man coming to terms with the fact that he lives in a cruel irony. You are going to die here, and that's okay. Death can be beautiful. The cycle of life never stops, and though you're surrounded by so many people in a lively place, nothing here is truly alive, and the ultimate defiance of The Combine is to live anyway, and you're going to be denied even that. Nobody can shoulder the crushing weight of conscious existence forever, and your time has simply come. Look around you. You see everything. You feel nothing.

I've barely described the music here, but I don't think that's really the point White Ward was going for. This is all about mood and atmosphere over riffs. It's atmospheric black metal with a saxophone, what more do you really need to know? I could paint a much better picture of what the album feels like by saying it sounds like nostalgia for a time that hasn't happened yet than I can by telling you that it's noir-y and sad black metal. The real genius of Love Exchange Failure is in the intangibles, and I hope I've made that clear.


Originally written for Lair of the Bastard