The Daily Spin, February 2

Holy Fawn | Death Spells

Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. Month 2!

Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.

If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!

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Album: Death Spells (2018)

Artist: Holy Fawn

Link:

  

Holy Fawn takes metal, progressive rock, and shoegaze each to wonderful new dimensions, oscillating between the three genres with surprising ease and a comfort that I don’t think I came into the album prepared for. 

Where Death Spells goes so very right are the moments where they lean into the prog-rock and shoegaze, eliciting comparisons to This Will Destroy You in my mind. It’s harsh and beautiful in its sparseness, lending nothing but bleak instrumentation, weaving a gorgeous, if burningly empty, tale. 

There are moments where the record misses - heavy metal remains largely outside my sweet spot as far as music goes, and there are a few moments in this record where you’re slammed with noise, to the detriment of the songs themselves - drowned in noise, so much of what gives the album depth - the crackles and whispers of tracks echoed throughout the entire album - it all gets lost.

The album really hits a stride about halfway through - and indeed, the four through nine hitters here are like the ‘27 Yankees. Hit after hit after hit. It’s where the album loses any fear of introspection and instead dives deep within itself, pulling the shoegaze to the front, tying it to progressive rock-influenced builds that complement each other better than anything else on this record does. 

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Rating: 8.1/10

Best Tracks: Seer; Take Me with You; Two Waves

Worst Tracks: Dark Stone