Since their 2017 debut Dixieland, Flint, Michigan’s Greet Death have been embracing death with the same fondness as most pop music has been doing with love. There is an introspective timidness in Greet Death’s music that makes it really heartfelt, no matter how dark and gory the lyrics get, which makes their delivery of doom quite unique.
Although the group’s first two records are beloved by fans, the third release, Die In Love, is undoubtedly their best… by a mile. Whether in terms of the music, lyrics, production, or the vocal performance (especially), the band has grown and matured profoundly.
The album is stylistically divided into two unmistakably distinct parts – both equally powerful and poignant – one led by Logan Gaval and the other by Harper Boyhtari.
Gaval’s songs are raw, both in terms of their lyrics and how they are performed. His weary vocals are a perfect fit for his dry and gritty shoegaze tracks – “Die In Love,” “Same But Different Now,” “Red Rocket,” “August Underground,” and “Motherfucker” – that flirt with ethereal rock and metal in a beautifully unsettling way. His lyrics are blunt – “Lay me down to rest, I’m clawing / Everytime I hear you calling / Break open my chest, I’m falling / Side by side into the coffin” (“Red Rocket”) – where melancholia meets macabre and sounds more heartfelt than grisly. This is because Gaval's voice – which are way more mature than they’ve ever been – have a genuine niceness to them.
Boyhtari’s songs are downright sweet. She processes all things morbid with sensitivity and soulfulness. Her songs – “Country Girl,” “Emptiness Is Everywhere,” and “Love Me When You Leave” – are heartfelt alt-country numbers loaded with melody.
Far from the stormy doom-shoegaze of Gaval’s tracks, the Boyhtari cuts are gentle and simple. Apart from the melody, her songs will break your heart because of her lyrics and how she sings them: “Everyone gets nervous when the lights get low for the ones you know. And the end comes slow. Emptiness is everywhere, so hold each other close” (“Emptiness Is Everywhere”). “Once you’re gone you’re never coming back. We’re all dreamers chasing shadows ‘round the track. So if you go, then will you leave a sign for me? If it’s you first will you love me when you leave?” (“Love Me When You Leave”). “I got off work and went to see a movie starring Kurt Russell at the Logan, Halloween. And John Carpenter’s The Fog with Jamie. Jamie Lee Curtis and the Nightmare on Elm Street” (“Country Girl”).
Boyhtari expresses her gloomy feelings as a storyteller, coloring her rather gray narrative with details, whether it is imparting deep sage advice or just depicting the triviality of everyday being. Moreover, her lyrics are pure poetry gold that you could read over and over as you weep over their beauty. Her genial and calming vocals have a sense of pureness that is very touching. The gravity in her voice makes her words sound as if they are coming from someplace genuine, like the lived experience of someone very wise.
An album about death by a band whose work is exclusively centered around just this concept, can be reductive or tiring, if not plain juvenile. But Greet Death have taken on the one topic that is so close to their hearts with such thoughtfulness and creativity that this album about death, as it turns out, is wonderfully multi-dimensional and full of life.