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A HERO’S DEATH

Spike Sidor
Fontaines DC A Hero's Death Review Album Cover

FONTAINES D.C.

2020 POST-PUNK

A Hero’s Death is the second studio album by Irish post-punks Fontaines D.C. I’m a bona fide sucker for the genre and with the band often being characterized as sensible but cerebral post-punk listening was required. To make makers more urgent acclaim from writers and internet chatterers practically poured in. Initially, I thought this was their first LP but upon further research remembered that I had listened to their actual debut, Dogrel, when it dropped the prior year. My only recollection being a single foggy chorus and the album cover, certainly not a good sign. The sound they are working with is as advertised, punk structuring, distorted guitar, lyrics of light discontent, but these descriptors don’t get to the heart of the matter.  A Hero’s Death is embarrassingly ordinary, the watered-down bootleg copy of the genre, simply lame. The vocals are unique in a way with their completely wooden delivery which could be elevated with the kind acerbic yarn spinning or sharp-witted observations that their contemporaries are so known for. By and large they cover the low to mid end of the quality spectrum with occasional leaps to poetic and dips to embarrassment. The opener brings a simultaneously moody title and instrumental with I Don’t Belong. The rock instrumentation is bland and marches along less with purpose and more with begrudging necessity. The chorus, and this will be a running theme, is repeated incessantly from the half-awake front man.

I don’t belong to anyone
I don’t belong to anyone
I don’t belong to anyone
I don’t wanna belong to anyone

Whether he is referring to not wanting to belong to another person, idea, or group hardly matters when you state the thought in such a basic manner like you’re a moody pre-teen. Love Is The Main Thing is the same thing as the prior.

Love is the main thing
Love is the main thing
Always the same thing
Alwaysly raining
Love is the main thing

Funny, he thinks so too. At least the pace is picked up on Televised Mind but there is still no energy. Wouldn’t you guess that the title is this song’s ad nauseum chorus and the lyrics dealing with not having your mind be ruled by corporate media. Revolutionary stuff really. A Lucid Dream steadily roils with surprising intensity as the lyrics take a turn for the better. Harried lines about the circumstances of one’s life shifting quickly and unexpectedly satisfy but by the end of the verse the singer is awkwardly rushing to squeeze the words in only to finish it off with a lethargic “ahhh”, sour, silly, it stops what positive momentum they had going. The next two tracks slow things down and it yields a definite improvement. Particularly the plucky guitars and mournful delivery on Oh Such A Spring. The lyrics sorrowfully reminisce of a time gone past in a seaside town. 

The clouds cleared up
The sun hit the sky
I watched all the folks go to work just to die

However, things take a hard dip on the title track, a tired old post punk jam with verses stuffed with clichés. Half way through and we are already up to our eyeballs in saccharine platitudes 

Don’t get stuck in the past
Say your favourite things at mass
Tell your mother that you love her
And go out of your way for others
Sit beneath a light that suits ya
And look forward to a brighter future
Most passes for middle school assembly wisdom but I do find the charm in one of the last bits
If we give ourselves to every breath
Then we’re all in the running for a hero’s death

Living In America is a nocturnal piece with noisy guitars in the undercurrent that does and says nothing, no really, that’s it. I Was Not Born brings us back to the childish revelations with our singer stating that he was not born to make a capitalist rich. Not that there’s anything wrong with this topic but it’s said in such a pretentious way, with a superiority over regular folks.

I was not born
Into this world
To do another man’s bidding
All you antiquated strangers
All throwing in the towel
To do another man’s bidding

Sunny is another quiet thoughtful slow burner about being in an anxious fog, uncertainty around every corner. The instrumental is bare bones and bass heavy but works well with the vocalist to convey that “I’m depressed and have no idea what’s going on” feeling. The closer, No, derails the album at the finish line with a ballad straight out of a 90s alternative rock band’s deep cuts. It’s unflattering and boring which is at least consistent with the whole listening experience. A Hero’s death is bad, derivative and lifeless with the couple of above average outings in the listing hardly doing enough to pull it from the wretches. It’s post-punk that would easily make it past tyrannical censors in a dystopian near-future. It makes me sad not in its content but in its inability to make me feel anything other than tired. 

2-3/10

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