Eliot's Reviews: Deathconsciousness | Have a Nice Life
- Eliot Jemison
- Oct 24, 2025
- 5 min read
Welcome back to Eliot's Reviews. Today we will jump into Deathconsciousness by Have a Nice Life, an American Rock band founded out of Middletown, CT. Let's jump right in.
ALBUM DETAILS:
Released: January 24th, 2008
Recorded: 2002-2007
Genres: Shoegaze, Gothic Rock, Post-Punk, Post-Rock, Ambient, Deathrock, Drone, Post-Industrial
REVIEW:
BEST SONG: Earthmover
WORST SONG: Who Would Leave Their Son Out In The Sun?
OVERRATED: I Don’t Love
UNDERRATED: Deep, Deep
BEST MOMENTS: Fade in on A Quick One Before The Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut, Bloodhail Intro, Hunter Drop, electronic instrumentation at the start of Track 2 (Editor's Note: This is not the official track title, removed for school guidelines), Track 2 (Editor's Note: This is not the official track title, removed for school guidelines) drop, Deep, Deep synth, I Don’t Love drop, Earthmover intro, Earthmover drop.
FINAL SCORE: 10/10
OTHER NOTES: For so many years, my favorite album from 2008 was Third by Portishead, a great Electronic and Experimental Rock album, but little did I realize that 4 years later I would find this album, which had been released just 3 months before Third. This is one of my favorite concept albums of all time, one because of how clear the concept is, and two because of the effort the rock duo Have A Nice Life put into this concept as a whole. The story of this album is about a character named Hunter, whose main goal is to kill everything he sees and become all powerful. The story continues as Hunter grows even more powerful, He creates a staircase reaching to the skies out of everyone he has killed. Eventually, this staircase stretches to heaven, where Hunter finally walks up to kill God, sending them back down to Earth, and becoming a new, even more powerful god.
After a while, Hunter feels the regret for everything he has done to gain this position, realizing how all of his efforts were for nothing, and out of despair, he ends his own life. With no god to protect the Earth, the apocalypse begins and the world ends, and Hunter’s job is no longer needed. This story goes even further though, with certain copies of the vinyl coming with a 70 page book about the story, and exploring the fictional religion of Antiocheanism.
The album comes with a very wide soundscape from ambient to noise, quiet to extremely loud. The album starts with and almost 8 minute ambient track called A Quick One Before The Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut, throwing off the listeners expectations of what is about to come of the next track, Bloodhail, a loud shoegaze style track with very loud, memorable drum noises that will stay throughout the entire album. The end of the track repeats the words “Arrowheads” over and over, describing the chaos Hunter will cause when he becomes God. Moving on from the story, The Big Gloom and Hunter have more of an ambient soundscape, and the next three tracks, Telefony, Who Would Leave Their Son Out In The Sun?, and There Is No Food become progressively more quiet each track before fading into disc 2, The Future.
The second disk is much faster paced, starting with arguably the most replayable song on this album, Waiting For The Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail, a song under the genre Deathrock, which is much more fast paced and aggressive. One of the most disturbing songs of all time in my opinion comes right after, Track 2 (Editor's Note: This is not the official track title, removed for school guidelines), which shows the start of Hunter’s regret towards what he had done, how he believes that everything he does is planned out in advance, and how he does not care about the tasks he is given anymore.
One of the most iconic parts in this album comes at the start of this song, which is some sort of electronic instrumentation, sounding straight from an old 90s NES game. The unsettling neofolk intro switches to one of the most aggressive post-rock songs of all time halfway through, the drums seemingly have no pattern anymore, and it slowly fades back the looping acoustic guitar that you hear at the start. The next track is The Future, which kind of builds on the last track, again using that electronic sound, back to loud drone noises, slower paced and quieter. This song is a perfect way to transition into Deep, Deep, which starts off with another seemingly random drum pattern, to a very deep bass noise, very different from the last track. The synth use on this song is extremely good, and is the main highlight of this song for me. After this song comes I Don’t Love, which is slightly overrated to me, but it’s still a perfect track. This song has one of the most unexpected drops, starting with a short acapella to an extremely loud drone and rock song so loud you can’t tell the instruments apart from each other. Both of these songs represent Hunter’s insanity after Track 2 (Editor's Note: This is not the official track title, removed for school guidelines), and it works so well. The final track, Earthmover, is one of the most crazy listening experiences, essentially compiling everything you had just listened to into a 12 minute post-rock song. It starts ambient, like the first song, then builds up, then fades back to ambience, and then after, a very fast droning guitar sound, showing the end of the world due to Hunter’s death, going on for minutes on end, no more lyrics, the story is over. Every time i listen to this album or even any of these songs on their own, I’m always extremely blown away by how they were able to pull off this concept so well in the form of music, showing the genius of Have A Nice Life as a whole.
I love this album but I wished they had a bigger discography. Their next album, The Unnatural World doesn’t even come close to Deathconsciousness, and their last album, The Sea Of Worry, is their worst album so far. I still love Have A Nice Life nonetheless, and their debut album will remain as one of the best albums of all time.
Featured Cover by Jacques-Louis David