deathcrash are older and better on Somersaults

Deathcrash, a still-young London band now approaching ten years of friendship, map their own learning curve in the coming-of-age story of their latest record, Somersaults. Yet, while much of the lyrics dwell on sharp and raw memories of the past, this album is a massive progression of sound. It’s outspoken, energetic, confident, and mature – proof that all four members are now ready to become the best versions of themselves.

The deathcrash before Somersaults channeled a quiet beauty that was wrapped up in field recordings, crackling drums, sludge guitars, and fragments of looped sounds. The four-piece – Tiernan Banks (vocals/guitar), Matthew Weinberger (guitar), Noah Bennett (drums), and Patrick Fitzgerald (bass) – came up as a slowcore band, releasing 15-minute-long tracks, instrumental EPs, and the sprawling records Return (2022) and Less (2023). Echoes of the band’s past selves still exist in Somersaults. Songs like “CMC” and “Wrong To Suffer” feature familiar, slow-building, and atmospheric introductions, marked by either a meditative acoustic guitar melody or a rustling electric guitar tone respectively. They also carry a similar looseness in structure, lingering on each instrumental note before meekly introducing Banks’ softspoken vocals.

Yet, whereas the first two instrumentally-driven records intensely studied silence, this album blasts one cathartic note after the other. Somersaults offers a vocally-driven performance mostly by a now-outspoken Tiernan Banks, who found his footing as a singer-songwriter last year on his gothic folk-ish, lyrical solo record The Ribbon Songs. There, he was successfully able to resist the temptation to drown his crooning in layers of synths and feedback loops, discovering the emotional range of his warm, calming, and genuinely pleasant voice. Much of that breakthrough gets refined in Somersaults, where he finally lets his voice determine the mood of the song. In “Stay Forever”, a nostalgic track that yearns for the comfort of his childhood bedroom yet aches to move out, Banks transforms a downbeat rock tune into a comforting lullaby. The ironically-titled “Triumph” adopts a more acidic tone, with Banks cracking into a yell as he whines about failure, resentments, and insecurity. He also attracts so much energy from his bandmates who, for the first time in the deathcrash discography, join in singing, giving Somersaults this rough, homemade, and communal edge.

This brave leap away from their roots underlines the record’s central narrative of growing up and becoming confident bandmates. Both lyrically and musically, deathcrash succeed to push themselves toward the center of a London scene that, until recently, labeled them as outsiders compared to the bombastic, post-punk sensations that were their contemporaries. Angsty rock tracks like “NYC” confront their frustrations about touring anxiety, the pressure to become profitable, and the difficulties in understanding why they chose this career with crashing drums, crisp vocals, and invigorating guitars. When they get to “Bella”, their unbridled love for music shines with a spectacular band moment, where each member gets a lightning-hot solo flexing their individual talents and proves why he belongs on stage. Their joy then gets cemented with them shouting the clunky yet poignant moral of the record altogether: “Be open to anything adult!”

Somersaults sounds like a record all four members of deathcrash truly believed in – a piece of music they could all literally stand up and sing about without any hesitation. Rightfully so: its confidence in composition and delivery is infectious, making this their best work yet.