Born out of the ashes of Youth Novel, Heavenly Blue finds both old and new members at a crossroads. ‘We Have The Answer’ crushes both on a positive and negative note, where the compositional and vocal heft gets lopsided with purposeful albeit distracting unkempt mixing and one-note nihilistic writing.
Sometimes, there may be a reason to refresh a band and resume its operations as perhaps the art paves the way to find meaning within this world that strangles each and one another, especially as what we process intellectually and emotionally gets tailored altogether within the art that an individual or a band creates. Through the once-disbanded screamo act Youth Novel that managed to pull together one project in 2020 and rejuvenated as Heavenly Blue a few years later, their drive to create music once again seemed rooted in finding an answer to resolve what troubles in their mindset and environment. Through their aptly-titled debut album, ‘We Have The Answer’, it manifests that emotional and creative drive that allows the band to open more avenues within their screamo and post-hardcore sound.
Despite this being a debut album for Heavenly Blue, there is a compositional heft that only comes from musicians who know what they are doing, and it's clear that the past experiences of the members of this band have led them all to the spark that is within the melodic foundations and buildups of a lot of these songs, paired with textural smolder from the drums and guitars that allow these songs to charge through. But, of course, the back-and-forth screams from Juno Parsons and Mel Carens are important as they let that anguished tone stab deep, adding even more chaotic, fractured flair to the album. The cycling tremolo guitar passages of ‘We Have The Answer’, the gliding crescendos from the bass and guitar melodies on ‘Glass So Clear’, the gentle acoustic pickups that build up to the filthy melodic reckonings of ‘Certain Distance’ and ‘...And Like That, A Year Had Passed’, the cutting melodic sweeps that blow through ‘A Part Of Me, A Part Of You’, and ‘Heat Death Parade’ eventually transition to the rapid-fire rhythms of ‘All Of The Pieces Break’.
This eventually leads to the narrative that the album delves deep into. Right from the jump, the protagonist seems to accept that bleak tragedy that the album eventually explores afterward, where perhaps the journey that the protagonist goes through is seeking a way to find a semblance of relief within the pressured world, a path that the protagonist thinks seems to be in vain. As the album continues to progress, the protagonist grapples with the disillusioned effects of isolation wherein they observe just how much clinging to nostalgia doesn’t provide an escape when people that they love have died and how that sense of lonely ennui gets crushing when there is no real connection to the people around them and also makes holding on to the hope where processing experiences of love, truth, and healing is pushed back, where the thought of having them doesn’t seem to be worth it as they eventually succumb to a defeatist mindset where the options that are open for the sake of escapism is useless, especially when it doesn’t provide a balm for all the rage and pain that they have kept through and through. The combination of language that’s both plainspoken and abstract only makes the nihilism to the core feel even more succumbing, especially when the language is clear enough that the message of losing hope and accepting pain just gets amplified.
Unsurprisingly, given this narrative, the overall mix is unkempt, an intended choice to allow those mix of emotions to pop off in a ruffled fashion, where the instruments and the vocals change frequencies from song to song as they reflect the theme and tone of the album. While it makes sense, it doesn’t make the kick drum and the sticky melodies end up distracting and blemished. For one, if the overall mix shifts from song to song, it may as well do the same thing with the kick drum due to its distracting flatness that isn’t blended properly within most of the songs. A distraction that only gets frustrating due to the lack of punch that it provides, sounding thin-skinned and sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the instruments within the mix. This also leads to the production sacrificing the dynamics of the grooves section, with the bass presence sounding less present than ever. While the band’s guitarist and producer Maya Chan does a potent job of still capturing the clear tones of the instrumentation, she could’ve done something intriguing with the production that can capture the shaken soundscape while not kicking down the compositions and the grooves. It doesn’t exactly help that despite the potent poetry shown in the writing, there is something about the nihilistic tone framed in isolation that doesn’t land the way it should. Perhaps it is due to the acceptance of that defeatist streak from the very beginning that comes off one note, alongside the fact that given everybody else has worked past that lonely numbness caused by the pandemic as the world manages to open up in the last two years, it creates an odd detached feeling towards the writing, especially given the context of the pandemic that the album embraces completely.
Heavenly Blue and their debut record right here is a beginning that has promise within the compositional and emotional heft that comes from the instrumental and vocal melodies having enough bite to go along with the bleakness that surrounds it. Yet as much as there is intent and insight within the mixing and the writing, it comes off half-effective, with the production forgetting to blend the kick drum within the rest of the shambling mix and submerging the tunes of the compositions - especially the bass sections - and with the writing whose details of isolation amidst some nihilistic wreck don’t exactly land, especially with the defeatist acceptance making the poetry coming off less enrapturing. There might be an answer found within the wreckage, but if the next step is to coil within agony after seeking that one specific answer, it misses out on the possibility of hope that will spill through in the future.
Favorite Tracks: ‘We Have The Answer’, ‘Glass So Clear’, ‘Certain Distance’, ‘...And Like That, A Year Had Passed’, ‘A Part Of Me, A Part Of You’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Static Voice Speaks To Static Me’