Electronic punk/emo project birds fear death does not seem to fear annihilation. It's not something the project's creative lead Kelly Wilhite appears keen on avoiding... At least not aesthetically. Kelly's latest release under this nomdeplume is livestream death compilation, a provocatively, Live Leak-inspired title whose opening track "pretty girl snuff film" articulates acts of self-mutilation before ending with several repetitions of the blunt coda, "kill yourself." It's edgy. No question. It might even hew too closely to the confessions of a mall goth for some, but it's consistent enough quality-wise to be taken seriously, in my opinion. Most of the project's songs deal in some manner or another with self-inflicted harm, death, feelings of desperation, longing for negation, and general petitions to a waiting void. This subject matter is a common, binding thread that winds across all three of birds fear death's releases, and livestream death compilation is no exception. This isn't unusual stuff for young people to write about. Especially not since the internet became a widely available amenity of American family life. Lots of kids post through their pain late at night after their parents have gone to bed. Flying tear-soaked paper airplanes, brimming with the marrow of their angst, into the black, starving sun of the information super-hell portal. If anyone granted half the things my younger self wrote in my LiveJournal with any level of validity I'd probably still be under observation in a mental health facility somewhere. birds fear death are particularly adept at capturing this sense of inescapable anguish that people tend to experience in the springtime of their lives, as well as the moods and measures that it might drive them towards. While suicide isn't a new or unusual topic in punk and emo music, I have yet to encounter a project that approaches the matter in the way that this one does. An undaunted flirtation with the actual act and its consequences which still retains enough of a sense of humor and even irony about itself to ease the imminent horror of its implications. A dare to grasp the absurdist detachment and guffaw at what a thin white envelope addressed to friends and family and left on the mantelpiece might imply. A penchant for DSBM production crossed with Myspace-era gothic Romanticism that integrates crusty acoustic punk, Alkaline Trio traipsing melodicism, and a cracked approach to electronic music sequencing that sounds like it's oozed from an abscess in Alice Glass's cranial cavity. It all wafts through the senses like the smell of burning plastic exuded by a decades-old laptop whose exhaust fan has given up the ghost. It's dark but not without a sense of self-awareness. And while I don't doubt that some of the bereaved notions expressed here are genuine, they're never presented without a sense of aspiration for renewal. It anticipates that daisies will sprout from our graves and is warmed by the knowledge that the sun will continue to shine even after we as individuals have passed under the shrowd of an eternal night. It appears to me that birds fear death doesn't aim to alienate themselves or others with their music, but rather to throw open the shutters and let light shine in on uncomfortable, taboo, and pain-riddled subjects in order to show that none of us suffer in as much isolation as we might think. Either that or their brain has been totally melted by exposure to simulated snuff videos and shock content posted anonymously to deep web forums. You'll have to judge for yourself, but I think there is real merit in what they are doing here.
