Though they were actually just broken up for five years, the gap between Death From Above’s 2004 full-length debut You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine and 2014’s The Physical World inevitably saddled the latter album with a decade’s worth of expectation. This time, with their new album Outrage! Is Now arriving three years after The Physical World, it may seem as if Death From Above, now back to their original name, have settled into a more routine working rhythm. But since getting back together in 2011, the Toronto dance-punk duo has been tentative about its future, offering little more than a we’ll-see-what-happens outlook at every step.
Perhaps as a way of curtailing anticipation this time, bassist/keyboardist Jesse Keeler and drummer/vocalist Sebastien Grainger didn’t even announce Outrage! Is Now until three weeks before its release date. Nevertheless, judging from some of the new lyrics, Grainger and Keeler might still be just as conscious of the passage of time—and their music’s place in it—as they were on The Physical World. “There’s gotta be another [...] generation/Ready for a revolution/Or a change of station,” Grainger sings on “Never Swim Alone.” And on the title track, he adds, “I’m out of rage/Maybe it’s my age [...]/Suddenly I don’t belong/To anyone/Or anything.”
If Grainger is indeed singing from his own point of view there, then it’s all the more remarkable that Outrage! Is Now makes such a convincing case study against the axiom that artists lose their edge as they age. For a pair who once lived by a Get-in-the-Van ethic and now find themselves somewhat bewildered about their transitions into settled lives of marriage and home ownership, Death From Above now sound more vital than ever.
Fans of the band’s early-2000s output should know that Keeler and Grainger no longer just bash their way through their songs in ephedrine-fueled fits of twentysomething angst. At this point, it would be foolish and disingenuous of them to try. Part of what contributes to the new material’s impact is the band’s ability to embrace their age and make it play into their existing strengths. In fact, the basic formula of vocals, distorted bass/keyboards, and drums remains pretty much the same as before. But Grainger and Keeler actually enhance the gut-punching character of their music by tempering themselves.
On Outrage! Is Now, they add manifold contours they had only touched on with their last album: more reflection, more funk, more production finesse, and crucially more hooks. When album opener “Nomad” gallops into its chorus, for example, the bass and drums momentarily stop advancing, making room for Grainger’s reverb-soaked voice to carry across the open space. The effect is not unlike when a cinematographer pans up from the ground to a wide-angle view that’s clearly intended to take the audience’s breath away. And more than half of the album’s 10 tracks contain spots where Grainger shows a penchant for sing-along melodies—the kind that, on earlier albums, he’d almost seemed to stumble on by accident.
When Death From Above formed, the original intention was to write bass and drum parts simple enough that other people could learn them while Keeler and Grainger played more complex guitar parts over top. That never happened, and instead the duo came to wear simplicity, speed, and volume as their badge of honor. Outrage! Is Now does suffer in spots from uneven pacing. The bouncy, piano-pop hook of lead single “Freeze Me” might have flowed better if it didn’t prematurely halt the momentum of “Nomad,” for example. But it’s a testament to Death From Above’s growth that they can afford three songs with traces of Bowie’s iconic “Fame” groove on the same album (“Statues,” “Never Swim Alone,” “Caught Up”) without actually repeating themselves. With Outrage! Is Now, Death From Above join the rare breed of artists who are able to capitalize on their maturity without betraying the spirit of their youth.
