London indie band deathcrash take a more accessible approach to their despondent slowcore mantras with promising results on their third studio album, Somersaults.
Release date: February 27, 2026 | untitled (recs) | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
deathcrash is a band I’ve kept my eye on not long after they released their debut full-length Return and the stride they’ve maintained since then has been nothing short of exciting. The UK act’s way of channeling brooding but unpretending emotions through a familiar kind of slowcore that tastefully teeters between post-rock, noise rock, and emo is something that immediately gravitated me towards them, even more so from how their sensibilities to hooks and melodies were made more visible on their follow-up record Less. This progression in just two albums confirmed to me that a breakout sure was imminent; it showed me a band able to honor a relatively niche genre and expand upon it with other musical avenues that livens it rather than pushing it away altogether. Their newest output Somersaults continues this very pattern, with deathcrash taking a more accessible approach to their meandering soundscapes this time around.
In a curious contrast to what I had just written, the group reminisce and land on a pool of nostalgia with Somersaults, uncovering a pastiche of memories that weaves in longing, frustrations, and fondness of childhood that comes with the clinging of a certain innocence free from hurt; it’s a record that, simply put, struggles to come to terms with reality. It stands to reason, then, that the album is much more candid as a result: ‘I walked home on purpose/so I wouldn’t get there early‘ and ‘I didn’t want to notice/there’s things we wouldn’t say‘ are some of the ruminations that are subtle but nonetheless persistent on the opening title track, carrying itself with the bright tonalities of an alternative rock slow-burner that wonderfully crescendos into a wistfully tender rock anthem that finds itself clashing with the fear of losing your inner child at the behest of growing up and finding success.
“Somersaults” provides a fitting overview of the album’s underlying musings that seek some semblance of simplicity and a quick resolve to the complexities that life brings onto relationships with others. The tried-and-true deathcrash slowcore single “Triumph” pleads for a passionate present at the cost of concealing imperfections on top of whirling passages that suggest an emotional breaking point waiting to happen. The lines ‘I don’t know if I’ll die with grace/I’m not sure if I want to‘ and ‘Oh, I’ll never grow up at all/I’m not sure if I want to‘ are begrudgingly repeated on the heavy but surprisingly gentle “Love For M”, a song housing some of the rawest vocal performances of the band to date. There’s a cloud of defeatism that looms over these tracks that really hones in on the realness of wanting to return to simpler times, and deathcrash do so in a manner that’s both cathartic and self-aware.
The title track also sees them engaging in more sonic explorations, especially evident on the first three songs of the record. This run is livelier and more streamlined, which was a bit jarring to me at first because the shift into the more moodier songs after these cuts is not necessarily discreet. Still great songs in of themselves – The Strokes influence is apparent on power chord-heavy slacker rock single “NYC” in the way the vocals are produced and delivered, with its anthemic drumming leading way to a line that very much so captures the feelings throughout the album in the most blunt fashion possible:
‘Crush me
I don’t do a thing because my guts scream
30, no career, fucking worries me
and doing the band doesn’t help.‘
Again, it’s this pervading resignation that elevates this struggle with confronting reality to palpable heights. Not all is bleak, though – take a song like “CMC”, where it finds a sense of gratefulness in complacency, the chime of the guitars interplaying with the lulling flow further honing in on the sentiment that the things that I need are what I already have, with all its positives and negatives. It’s much more troubling considering the lines ‘this life is the best one/oh god it’s the only‘ recited throughout with warped optimism. It’s a really well-constructed track that once more highlights their strengths in songwriting and hooks.
While I appreciate and enjoy these detours, it’s clear that deathcrash‘s strong suit is in their proclivity to craft songs that are dense and winding. It’s in the way they ornament instrumentation on a track like “Bella”, or how the 90s emo influences shine through on the gritty “Stay Forever”. “Wrong to Suffer” and “The Thing You Did”, the longest track of the album, find them not afraid to really dive into the extremes musically and emotionally, with the latter veering into almost doom-like territory and whose uncontained and unabashedly unrelenting buildup and payoff is becoming one of my all-time favorite moments of the group. Even “Marie’s Last Dance” ends the record on a high note and executed with what they do best; it’s a moving closer with euphoric orchestration that progressively breaks into sheer desperation – contrasting attributes that drives the album’s central thesis into fruition.
Somersaults is an attestation to deathcrash‘s sonic evolution and an overall solid addition to what I hope can become the band’s considerable body of work. There’s no question that whatever leap they take to elevate their sound, it will be one that ultimately prides itself on its candor. Their take on slowcore still evokes a freshness bound to the genre’s despondent features and this album, although taking a bit of time to find its footing, nonetheless poses a naturality to their musical growth that really bounds them to no limits at this point. If this is a band that you’ve kept under your radar, then this is definitely the time to take matters into your own hands.
