Reviews
Album review: Better Lovers – Highly Irresponsible
Heavy supergroup Better Lovers deliver the goods with a no-holds-barred debut that proves beyond doubt the chaotic beauty of being Highly Irresponsible…
Just Every Time I Die being ridiculously heavy and brilliant. What else is new?
Buffalo's finest Every Time I Die have been keeping relatively shtum on their highly-anticipated ninth album, sharing vague teasers from the studio and giving very little away about the sound of the record.
But the band have finally unveiled a real, proper snippet of new music that will be appearing on the follow-up to 2016's incredible Low Teens album – and not only does it sound heavy-as-hell, there are some typically impressive lyrics from frontman Keith Buckley that can be heard, too.
Read this next: Keith Buckley: My life in books
Discussing his approach to lyrics on Low Teens with Kerrang!, Keith explained how becoming an author was of great help to how he then wrote for Every Time I Die: “I knew simpler was better,” he said. “I look back at all the things that I did prior to the last record, and I had all these ideas and things I wanted to say, but I wasted so much space by clouding it with nonsense. I don’t want to disparage anyone who likes certain things that I might think are terrible, but I could have stripped so many layers off and said something important. I’m figuring out how to strip it down to its most basic element; I think that’s what people connect with.”
In a later interview with K!, he added that he feels "good about" the lyrics on Low Teens, despite them coming from a place of personal trauma. "Every Time I Die was still there for me," he considered. "Really, it saved my life. That’s always been a part of who I am. It came out as my favourite record, I think. It’s hard to play those songs some of the time because I remember where I was when I wrote them.
“We don’t pay attention to the curve,” Keith added. “It’s really nice after this long to not really feel dependent on what the Internet says about your records. Not that they talk a ton of shit about us, we just know to keep our head down and keep doing what we’re doing. As long as we’re putting out music that we love, that’s true to ourselves and not bartering with public opinion, people are going to dig it.”
Well, it's safe to assume people are very much going to dig the band's latest material based on this…
Read this next: How Every Time I Die saved Keith Buckley's life