Death From Above 1979
Making a huge noise from just drums, bass, vocals, and the occasional synth, Death from Above 1979 pushed their sound to its limits, arriving at a severely overdriven rush of punk, hard rock, and dance music influences held together by high volume. They were among the more celebrated indie bands making dancey, debauched noise in the early 2000s, breaking up for a time before reuniting to awaken their furious clatter on 2014 comeback album The Physical World. They have continued to hone their sound, stripping it down on 2017's Outrage! Is Now and pushing the sonic envelope on 2021's Is 4 Lovers.
Toronto musicians Jesse F. Keeler (bass/synth) and Sebastien Grainger (drums/vocals) met and formed Death from Above in 2001. (The "1979" tag was added in 2004, following a legal settlement with the DFA label.) Without a guitarist -- or any other bandmember for that matter -- Keeler and Grainger were free to push their rhythmic sound as far as it would go. After issuing a few initial singles, Death from Above 1979 released You're a Woman, I'm a Machine in 2004 and never looked back, touring alongside such high-profile bands as Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age.
Romance Bloody Romance, a collection of You're a Woman remixes, appeared in October 2005 before Keeler and Grainger officially announced their disbandment the following August, as the two had apparently grown apart over the years. Keeler went on to work with producer Al-P in MSTRKRFT, while Grainger launched a solo career under the moniker Sebastien Grainger & the Mountains. In late 2010, the duo reconnected on a personal level, and in February 2011 they officially announced that they had re-formed the band. After a comeback set on the main stage at 2011's Coachella Festival, the duo began playing regular shows over the next few years.
The summer of 2014 saw them release their first single in nine years, "Trainwreck 1979," quickly followed in the autumn by their second album, The Physical World, which was produced by Dave Sardy and reached the Top 40 of the album charts. Stepping up their game, the band returned in 2017 with a shortened name, Death from Above, and a U.S. tour that included a stop at Riot Fest and a new single, "Freeze Me." A couple months later, their stripped-down and back-to-basics third album, Outrage! Is Now, was released by Last Gang and Warner Bros. In 2021, once again appending the 1979 to their name, they delivered Is 4 Lovers, which found them embracing a more dynamic, sonically adventurous sound.
© Johnny Loftus /TiVo
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