There is probably no band which better expresses the range and cloistered specificity of The Flenser label than the dynamic sonic topography of Have a Nice Life. Varying between a minimalist stasis, hardcore outbursts and the squall of shoegaze guitar immersion, the Connecticut band made their presence known on their expansive 2008 release, "Deathconsciousness". The album's qualities are clearly established in the pages of The Quietus; "The genres didn’t matter; the planet-devouring "Deathconsciousness" bled bedroom pop into amplifier worship all it liked, but came to be known as a masterpiece of depression". For a second opinion, one could also look to the consistently overblown hyperbole of Vice to substantiate this. Yet it was with 2014's "The Unnatural World" and its dive into even greater abstraction and obfuscation of the sound of physical band, that ignited many listener's imaginations. So much so, that it was a fan-assembled anthology which came to be released as their "Voids" album, which was recently given a multiple-format official edition on The Flenser. Sinuous instead of rigid, physical and textural instead of sterile, the gutturally upheaving beauty of "Having a Nice Life with Dan and Tim of Have a Nice Life", will have all the space and volume they could ever ask for next month at The Showbox, as Have a Nice Life engage on a west coast micro-tour with labelmates, Mamaleek. Outside of Have a Nice Life, The Flenser's roster varies in its nuance between the roaring solar blast of shoegaze and noiserock of bands like Deafheaven, to recently enlisted post-hardcore outfits like Chat Pile and Kayo Dot. Some of the more hushed sounds on the label recall mid-1990s slowcore, such as Madeline Johnston’s music as Midwife, and genre fusions bridging lofi folk and post-rock can be heard on Vyva Melinkolya's "Orbweaving" collaboration.
Embracing experimental black metal and hardcore, the label has released work by Agriculture and the "furious drums, squalls of guitar, and guttural vocals delivered in a language of pain", of Ragana's "Desolation's Flower", both of which were witnessed in a rip-roaring night last month on tour at The Crocodile. Specifically on the doom end of the spectrum, the label acted as one of the first homes for ever-ascending Bell Witch, as well as releasing early works by Botanist, who improbably had a feature in the pages of the Atlantic, "The Brilliant Black Metal Album about Plants Wiping Out Humankind". More recent entries by Drowse, Sprain, and Planning for Burial move between all of these points with their fluid hybrids of genre. Having passed the milestone of its tenth anniversary, the label's founder Jonathan Tuite described its ethos for New Noise; “When I started the label I was intending it to be very much focused on black metal,” Tuite explains. “There was sort of a black metal scene that was happening in the U.S. at that time. I mean it had changed forms and kind of diversified a little bit. So, Tuite expanded his label’s sonic horizons and began exploring other styles. “I have sort of gone with what intuitively feels like it relates to the label. So something like the Midwife record feels like it’s part of the Flenser catalogue. It doesn’t feel like an outsider, and so part of that is like intuition for me and just kind of different sets of judgment." In some ways, it could be surmised that, "The Flenser Is a One-Man Pursuit of Quality Doom". Rather than doom as the metal genre specifically, the label's site offers "100% Gloom", "Suffer", "No Future", and "Nope" as its conceptual and curatorial variables. Which it also represents in print, and heard on compilations like 2022's "Send the Pain Below".
