Life Metal

This is the eighth album by the drone metal duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley. Southern Lord Records gave it a limited release for Record Store Day on 13 April 2019 and a wide release two weeks later on the 26th. Steve Albini recorded and mixed it entirely on analogue tape. The title is an inside joke, set humorously against death metal and, more broadly, against anything that is all doom and gloom. The music is in fact brighter than most of their work and has a symphonic breadth to it. Anderson has described it as a personal reflection of his life as well: having children and becoming a father changed him in many ways, he sees things differently now, trying to be selfless matters to him, and that has changed his mood and how he thinks about and writes music. He set himself the task of writing heavy music that was not so dark. The material was made in two practice sessions in Los Angeles by Anderson and O'Malley with their frequent collaborator Tos Nieuwenhuizen; Tim Midyett, Hildur Gudnadottir and Anthony Pateras also play on it. A sister record, called a fraternal twin by the band, came out of the same work: Pyroclasts, released on 25 October 2019.