HEALTHYLIVING - Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief

Roadburn is coming closer and closer and yet again planning my personal running order evokes much more clash angst than I would have expected only a couple of weeks ago. What makes decisions especially difficult this time is that there are so many unknows, so many new artists or obscure artists and commissioned projects which sound promising, but it's really impossible to tell, which one I'm likely to prefer live.

But is knowledge really helping? Well in case of the central afternoon slot on Saturday it's certainly influencing me, Since I barely know most of the bands the members of Healthyliving are hailing from, I would normally have chosen to see the Duma / Deafkids collaboration in a heartbeat.

But "unfortunately" I have come to know the debut of the Spanish/Scottish/German trio now and wow, this is something!

HEALTHYLIVING - Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief (2023)

For those of you who might know them, let's start with the cast: Amaya López Carromero (Maud The Moth, Falloch, Ashenspire) on vocals, Scott McLean (among others also Falloch and Ashenspire - yes, I've heard of the latter) on guitars/bass/synth and Stefan Pötzsch (Lasse Reinstroem) on drums.

In terms of this year's Roadburn line-up it feels pretty safe to say that Healthyliving will most likely be a spritual continuation of Esben And The Witch on Thursday and Brutus on Friday.

They share the emotional depths and energetic outbursts with those bands, and their sound lives in an equally hard to define field of multiple Post genres, from Rock and Punk to  Hardcore, but also Noise, Doom and other heavier and darker influences, which you can hear in comparable form on albums from Gold (when they were still without the triple-G and -d in their name) or Dool. On the other side the whole work is knit with a golden threat of immensly catchy, but always profoundly serious Pop sensibility.

This isn't sing-along music at all though. But it is touching and moving. With its dreamlike psyche-delving lyrics over guitars often flowing in hypnotic waves it certainly has simultanously eery and welcoming qualities.

But even now I don't think we're close to what this album actually is and does. The versatility of Carromero's vocals alone calls for a different reference in almost every song, but without ever truly being a copy of what you're reminded of. The opener "Until" for instance sounds like "Hiss Spun"-Chelsea Wolfe interpreting a vocal line from early Lucifer, in other places the singer wails like Lana Del Rey or lifts off into high spiky registers at the meeting point of Avant-Garde Jazz and almost operatic expression.
And on the final track "Obey" I cannot for the life of me decide whether her performance is closer to ex-Sinistro singer Patrícia Andrade or various extremely talented Scandinavian artists... But sometimes it ultimately isn't actually important to know.

What wisdom I can offer without any doubt is that this is a flawless, amazing debut album, which should soon be living rent-free in many ears.

"Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief" releases digitally, on vinyl and CD on Good Friday, April 7th.