‘Let’s build a home, where loneliness can’t grow, and success isn’t defined by simply not being depressed’ (The Hell I Know)

I still vividly recall the first time I had the pleasure of catching The Saddest Landscape live back in 2012.  I had arrived at The Black Heart to find a scrawled note on the doors saying that the gig had been moved at the last minute to The Star Of Kings in King’s Cross.  To this day, I have never heard of another hardcore gig being hosted there, but it worked a treat.

A dark, low-ceilinged cellar.  No stage, the crowd jammed into every nook and cranny.  Their anticipation only heightened by having had to run round trying to find the pub in the first place.  We Were Skeletons kicked off the evening in great style, before TSL reduced the room to a sweaty, heaving, hoarse mass with an absolutely visceral, emotionally charged set.

So, I was rather excited to see that the band were returning with their first new album in eleven years, Alone With Heaven.  I must admit that this was tempered with a little wariness when I saw that it was to be a double LP, as they always represent a very specific challenge for bands rooted in hardcore.  Yet, it is clear that TSL knew what they were trying to achieve and how to strike that all important balance between atmosphere and intensity.

In part, it’s because this very balance has always been intrinsic to their songcraft – tension ratcheting builds priming savagely cathartic eruptions, frenetic sonic violence disassembling into passages of swirling, haunting melancholy.  It is also, you suspect, a reflection of this specific writing process itself.  Having toured 2015’s Darkness Forgives, the band found themselves on an unintended hiatus.  Founding drummer Aaron Neigher decided to head off in new directions, children arrived, and life demanded that things slow down for a while.  Rather than resist this, TSL consciously leant into the opportunity that this afforded to them.  They continued to rehearse regularly and used the space to write new material without any time pressures.

The body of songs that emerged is, of course, Alone With Heaven.  The beauty is that they have successfully honed an album that unequivocally honours the band’s roots, while evolving those same inspirations in new directions that feel innately organic.  Anyone who fell in love with the urgent, desperation fuelled hardcore of TSL in the 2000s will know without hesitation who they are listening to – the quivering passion of the vocals, the serpentine riffage, the whiplash rhythmic dynamics.  Indeed, they will find themselves immediately at home with the blistering opening one-two of The Hell I Know and From Home They Run, not to mention the seething Hold It Until It Hurts.

However, it is also obvious that the band are not sitting still.  Instrumental interludes are deployed to great atmospheric effect – prompting reflection while calling on melodic motifs from elsewhere on the album to echo the lyrical themes of memory, loss, and grief (I particularly love the skeletal dissonance of A Badge Of Hope).  Further texture is added by thoroughly well-judged guest vocalist appearances from Jeremy Bolm, Evan Weiss, and, most dramatically, Julien Baker’s searing contribution to the cello laced rapture of The Invisible Hurt.

Remarkably though for an album of such depth, TSL save the absolute peak for the album’s concluding title track.  The roiling, darkly resonant bass line.  The desperation frayed vocals.  The chiming mournful leads amid the rhythmic metallic heft.  Alone With Heaven is an absolute monster of a finale.

And, as is always the case with a TSL album, it is all beautifully put together.  They have always struck me as a band who still revel in music (not just their own) and who love the actual physicality of records.  This manifests itself in the striking artwork and lyric booklet, which evokes the band’s ongoing ambiguous navigation between hope and despair through a blend of sepia tinged photos and shadowy, theatrically staged images.  A wait that was well worth the while.