Location: San Francisco, California
Country: USA
Genre: Synth doom
Full length: My Death Is More Beautiful Than Your Life
Format: Digital. CD, cassette
Label: Crucial Blast (USA)
Release date: May 15, 2026
Prepare for another thunderous, apocalyptic sound that will be heard and felt globally. The seasoned musicians of My Heart, An Inverted Flame, Marc Kate, and Andee Connors aim to create something monumental and doom-laden using only synthesizers, electronics, and drums; no guitars or bass. Their relentless, creeping drone is driven by instruments traditionally found in techno and electro, complemented by a colossal, organic drum sound amplifying the sentiment of their lyrics.
Their 2020 debut album “Plague Notes, Unnamed, Unknown, A Finger Dragged Through Dust” started expanding doom ever outward and upward through minimalist yet ambitious songs, expanding its duration over an hour. These tracks were built from single notes and cold overtones, layered with waves upon waves of reverberations carving out space for themselves. Its ponderously mammoth sound was crafted from scratch, self-sustaining, and relentlessly growing from the momentum of their songwriting and the direction the band was heading in.
The last project to compose music this profound was Neptune Towers, a solo undertaking founded by Darkthrone drummer Fenriz who you may know from Isengard, Dødheimsgard, and more recently Coffin Storm. Or his session work with Ulver, Satyricon, Aura Noir, Damnation’s Hammer and other bands. Neptune Towers’ "Caravans to Empire Algol" and "Transmissions from Empire Algol," released by Moonfog Productions in 1994 and 1995, were among the first ambient/electronic/psychedelic/noise albums to emerge from second-wave black metal, and created opportunities to blend musical variety into something entirely new.
In many respects, their sophomore album “My Death Is More Beautiful Than Your Life” surpasses any and all previous efforts to cross rock, metal, and electronic music over. Its minimalist foundation of single notes and chords gradually penetrates your expectations of keyboard and synth compositions, patiently taking its time, working slowly and persistently to establish their presence. This crawling drone is the auditory equivalent of soaring over an earth ravaged by natural disasters and ecological collapse, searching endlessly for signs of life and finding none. Or maybe even heaven itself falling to earth to forever fade away.
Above the drone, there are near-inhuman noises that appear unattainable with a synthesizer. Some resemble screeching guitar feedback or rumbling bass tones, while others approach levels that no instrument on earth could generate. It seems it was hours of experimentation and trial-and-error ultimately resulted in the creation of these extraordinary downtuned tones.
More conventional keyboard and synth sounds frequently emerge, weaving in and out of the more surreal noises. Driven by drum patterns played with relentless intensity, sometimes erupting as sudden, thunderous bursts, these songs resemble a trance-like improvisational ritual designed to give you time to contemplate and reflect on the unspoken questions the band explores about life, mortality, and death.
The aim is not only to pull traditional doom rock from its box but to annihilate the box entirely, scattering the fragments and using alchemy to lead us all to oblivion. While comparable to bands across various genres, but never exactly like any of them. “My Death Is More Beautiful Than Your Life” dismantles convention with systematic precision and is sure to alter many perceptions of what doom rock can entail. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Marc Kate: Synths, effects, vocals
Andee Connors: Drums
Track list:
1. Every Step Is Corpsed
2. My Body, My Problem
3. Whispers In Dead Languages
4. Yes (__________)
5. Necrosomethingology
6. You. Alone.
7. No And Never
8. Some Leave Forever. Some Leave Forever Through Memory. Some Leave.
9. This Has Always Been The Disappearing Floor
10. We Forgot Who We Wanted To Become
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