L-R: Tim Macuga and Dan Barrett
- This is Deathconsciousness-And It begs the question - "What is the point?"- The prologue of the Deathconsciousness booklet.
Have a Nice Life is an experimental rock band from Connecticut. Consisting of Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga, the band is known for their unique style mixing elements of shoegaze, Post-Punk, Post-Rock, and drone, as well as the bleak, funereal atmosphere of their music. The band was founded in 2000, but didn't release their first record until 2008, when they came out with the double album Deathconsciousness. Though it was released to little attention at first, the album gradually picked up a devoted cult following on the internet. After this they went into another period of hiatus, releasing a couple collections of demos as well as an EP called Time of Land. In 2014 they released their second full length album, The Unnatural World, to widespread praise.
Discography:
- Deathconsciousness (2008)
- Voids (2010, demo)
- Time of Land (2010, EP)
- Live at the Stone NYC (2010)
- Voids II (2014, demo)
- The Unnatural World (2014)
- Sea of Worry (2019)
We kill everyone with tropes, tropes, tropes, tropes, tropes....:
- Arc Symbol: Arrowheads, which appear twice in "Bloodhail" with the lyric repetition of "Arrowheads" and "Hunter", which focuses on Humanity killing God by sending a "Great Hunter" to shoot him with his arrow.
- Album Intro Track: Despite being one of the longer songs on the album, "A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut" effectively functions as this for Deathconsciousness.
- All-Loving Hero: God in "Hunter" forgives mankind even as he lays dying of arrow wounds, and allows all the animals on earth to devour his flesh as a final act of love for his creation.
- All There in the Manual: The 70 page album booklet for Deathconsciousness, which contains a lengthy essay, supposedly by a professor of religious history whom the band contacted, about the history of the Antiochean cult from which the album draws many of its themes.
- And I Must Scream: The golems in "Earthmover". They cannot die or feel pain, but wish for death so they can be released from an existence that consists only of mindless destruction.
- Anti-Love Song: "Deep, Deep" is effectively about the guilt wrapped up in love and sex and how our procreative urge is at odds with our species' self-destructive nature. Funnily enough, "I Don't Love" is less about this and more about a Despair Event Horizon.
- Apocalypse Wow: "Earthmover" gives this impression, being the longest and most grandiose song on Deathconsciousness while describing the destruction of the world.
- Boléro Effect: "Hunter" and "Earthmover" both feature lengthy post-rock style crescendos.
- Broken Record: "We kill everyone with arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads..."
- Concept Album: Deathconsciousness is a loose one, based around The Books of Terror and Longing, the religious texts of a medieval cult called the Antiocheans who were persecuted by the Catholic Church for their heretical beliefs, which included denying the existence of heaven and possibly of God as well. There's almost no evidence outside of the album booklet that this cult or the Books of Terror and Longing ever really existed, so the whole thing can be read as an elaborate work of metafiction.
- The Unnatural World has a similar booklet, centered around spiritualism.
- Creator Thumbprint: Count on every Dan Barrett project to come packaged with a lengthy booklet expounding upon the concept of the album.
- Death Seeker: The Antiochean cult was based around a complex and somewhat ambiguous form of this; rather than wishing for death, they wished for release from an existence that could only end in death. The golems in "Earthmover" play it straight.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The cover of The Unnatural World, as well as the vinyl version of Deathconsciousness.
- Despair Event Horizon: "I Don't Love" is about teetering on the edge of this and considering suicide.
- Distinct Double Album: Deathconsciousness is divided into two discs, with the first being called "The Plow That Broke the Plains", and the second called "The Future".
- Drone of Dread: "Waiting for Black Metals Records to Come in the Mail" begins with one, while "The Future" has some droning feedback in the background that becomes increasingly louder as the song continues.
- Echoing Acoustics: A big part of their Signature Style.
- The End of the World as We Know It: "Bloodhail" describes an apocalyptic rebellion against God, while "Earthmover" depicts an army of golems destroying the world by physically tearing apart the land and mountains.
- Epic Rocking: Very few of the band's songs are under 5 minutes long. Their longer tracks include "Hunter" (9:43), "Earthmover" (11:28), and "Destinos" (13:23).
- God Is Dead: All of mankind comes together to literally murder him in "Bloodhail".
- Golem: "Earthmover" is about an army of golems destroying the earth, yet wishing for death themselves.
- Goth Rock: A noticeable influence on The Unnatural World. "Defenestration Song" almost sounds like The Sisters of Mercy could have done it.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Dan and Tim, they even referenced their friendship on The Unnatural World with the song "Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate".
- Horrible History Metal: "The Big Gloom" is about the death of Jean-Paul Marat, the event depicted on the album cover.
- Humanoid Abomination: There are several hints that Antiochus may have been one of these, including a legend from his time in the mountains of Dagestan in which he appears as a wandering sorcerer who takes residence in a village of the Avar people, acting as a fortune teller for them. However, when a man from the village offends him by spying on him as a crow whispers secrets to him, he disappears into his tent and emerges five days later as a monstrous being covered in raven feathers, who prophesies the complete destruction of the village before disappearing into the wilderness.
- Humans Are Bastards: A central theme of the band, most clearly expressed in "Hunter"."Teeth and hate
End our relationship
Of course it's sad but that's the way it is
Your violence always wins the day
Yes, your violence wins" - Instrumentals: "A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut", excepting some muffled spoken word at the end, as well as "The Future".
- Intentionally Awkward Title: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000".
- In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: A major theme of their music, with "Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail" and "Deep, Deep" containing some particularly notable examples; the former largely being about how our species' greed has resulted in us effectively turning the planet into a giant billboard, and the latter juxtaposing our procreative urge with our destruction of the planet and each other.
- Ironic Name: The band name, as their music is uncompromisingly bleak and depressing.
- Lead Bassist: Though he's not the frontman, Tim Macuga could qualify due to a large chunk of the band's songs being built around his bass lines.
- Mad Oracle: Antiochus.
- Messianic Archetype: The prophet Antiochus, as described in the album booklet, is an atypically grim example. His life story, which includes a lengthy period of wandering the world in his youth which is not detailed by the text, as well as a martyr's death at the hands of the religious authorities in Rome, greatly resembles the life and death of Jesus, which the author notes was most likely intentional.
- A Million Is a Statistic: Referenced in the preface to the Deathconsciousness booklet, in which the album title is defined as essentially an awareness of this trope."Knowing that an individual death is meaningless - any individual death, especially your own - that you are not a person, but a statistic - and noticing, more each day, the countless deaths that occur around you - of other people, of animals, of insects, of the sick and infirm, of accident victims, of plants ripped from the earth and worms crushed beneath the blades of plows - of authors in their rooms, scribbling out desperate words in the backs of books no one will ever read- even the shattering of molecular bonds, the disintegration of atomic structures, happening in every moment, millions in each nanosecond, everywhere-
And It begs the question, 'What is the point?'"
- Minimalistic Cover Art: Both versions of Deathconsciousness have this, with the more famous one having a cropped picture of the painting The Death of Marat, while the vinyl release has a black and white photo of a World War I soldier with the album title printed below.
- New Sound Album: While still genre roulette, Sea of Worry experiments much more with genre and some tracks even have a Lighter and Softer sound to them than the first two albums. Sea of Worry also marks the first time a Have a Nice Life album hasn't come with a booklet full of
Nightmare Fuel, instead opting for a simple gatefold with the lyrics. - Nonindicative Name: "Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail" is not about the act of waiting for black metal records to come in the mail. In fact, many of their song titles don't have much to do with their lyrics.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: "Cropsey" has one as part of its instrumentation.
- Perishing Alt-Rock Voice: Dan Barrett's vocals are like this.
- Perspective Flip: "Hunter" is a perspective flip of "Bloodhail", occurring from the perspective of God as he lays dying upon the earth.
- Precision F-Strike: In "Burial Society"."And I'll never know what you said, because I'll be FUCKING dead by then!"
- A faint "FUCK" is audible in the midsection of "Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail".
- The title "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000".
- One in "Sea of Worry" as well."Fell every tree in the forest
Put a bullet in every poet
Flatten every mountain
Level every hill
You’d best believe it
'Cause they fucking will"
- Questioning Title?: "Who Would Leave Their Son Out in the Sun?"
- Rage Against the Heavens: "Bloodhail" and "Hunter" describe a story, supposedly drawn from The Books of Terror and Longing, in which all of mankind rebels against God, building a massive ladder from their own bodies to the heavens, so that "the Great Hunter" can climb to heaven and shoot God down with his arrows.
- Single Stanza Song: All the officially released lyrics to Sea Of Worry are written out this way
- Shout-Out: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000", a reference to Warhammer 40,000. It also contains a reference to The Terminator as part of its metaphor of human beings essentially being machines."Send me back in time
And I'll bring us back in line
Just tell me whose mother I have to kill"- Voids has a song called "I'm Doctor House".
- "Dan and Tim, Reunited by Fate" is a reference to the Capcom fighting game Rival Schools: Reunited by Fate.
- The Something Song: "Defenestration Song".
- Take That!: "Sea of Worry" is one directed at the American right-wing - see Precision F-Strike above.
- Walking the Earth: After being ejected from Rome following an affair with a wealthy noblewoman that ended with the woman's suicide, the prophet Antiochus spent 27 years travelling across Europe and Central Asia on foot before returning to Rome a full fledged prophet. What happened in that time period is left mysterious, but is implied to be horrifying. See Humanoid Abomination for details. When asked what happened during this period, he reportedly said "Simply life, and that was enough."
- We All Die Someday: Antiochanism is this taken to an extreme; not only is everyone and everything doomed to die someday, they believed that, because of this fact, everyone and everything is already dead.
- Wham Line: The last line of "Earthmover"."And when their stone mouths open up
Just what words should come out but
We wish we were dead" - Who Wants to Live Forever?: The golems in "Earthmover" can neither die nor feel pain, but long to die anyway.
- Word Salad Title: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000", though the latter part of the title is in reference to the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000. Apparently the suicide rate in the United States is also 40,000 per year, though that may just be coincidence.
- "Sometimes, I just... I just... I just don't know."
