Review: Breaths – Though life has turned out nothing like I imagined, it is far better than I could have dreamt

Style: Progressive Blackened Post-Hardcore/Post-Metal (mixed vocals)
Review by: Will
Country: USA – VA
Release date: 21 January 2022

Though life has turned out nothing like I imagined, it is far better than I could have dreamt is the second album from Virginia based solo artist Breaths, who are, on this occasion, following the emo school of incredibly verbose titles. Breaths creates their music by blending an eclectic mix of emo, hardcore, post-metal, shoegaze and black metal, creating a unique sound that often treads threads a tightrope between harshness and beauty.

The album’s title, though long, is beautifully fitting for this album, which explores the interplay between loss and hope: Of grieving for the loss of something that once was, but recognising the value in what remains and holding out hope for a brighter future. This becomes immediately apparent in the furious first bars of the opening track ‘The Elders’ which acts as an overture for the album: the listener is told point-blank how the artist lost multiple members of their family starting at a young age and continuing into early adulthood. The black-metal style vocals are a perfect conduit for the sorrow and outrage that comes with being robbed of close family members. But the song takes an unusually optimistic turn, with lyrics “Maybe I’ll see you again someday, When death comes for me, Though I hope ages away, Death can wait for me”. There’s an odd hopefulness in these lyrics and in the swell of the music that accompanies them. That, though the trauma of losing family members is immense, the artist has resolved to continue living – to let death wait while they continue to live their lives before taking them to meet their elders.

After this overture, the album continues in this vein, each track an intimate love letter to those that have died. Each track is a combination of heartfelt lyrics delivered with the brutal honesty of Arab Strap but with a metal or post rock backing to further sell the emotional impact. “The Patriarch”, for example, is a beautiful, post-rock infused ballad which builds into a soaring instrumental backing reminiscent of Sigur Ros. Meanwhile, the vocals remain downbeat and mournful as in Mastodon’s “The Sparrow”. The dissonance between the vocal style and lyrics with the instrumental backing further highlights the ambivalent tone of the album: sorrow mixed with hope, a dark past looking into a bright future.

Following Black Metal tradition, the vocals are relatively low in the mix, treating the vocals as an extra instrument. It would be interesting to hear Breaths experiment with moving the lyrics up in the mix to showcase the brutally honest lyrics more, perhaps even scaling back the layers of instrumentation that sometimes threatens to drown out the vocals. Lyric-forward bands like Arab Strap use music to provide some texture to the vocals and give the listener nowhere to hide from the content of the verses and this could be an interesting direction Breaths could take. That said, the claustrophobia-inducing cacophony of sound that Breaths uses in their music is clearly effective at getting the listener into an emotional space and to participate in the music.

Though life turned out nothing like I imagined, it is far better than anything I could have dreamt. Is a worthwhile album that is innovative in its musical style and tone. Having an album that focuses on trauma is nothing new in the world of metal, but an album that can address trauma rather than languishing in it, and to resolve to continue on; to survive is not. And, in the difficult time we live in now, this is so much more important.

Recommended tracks: The Elders, The Patriarch, The Wayward
Recommended for fans of: Anathema, Arab Strap, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Rivers of Nihil
You may also like: Infant Island, Still, LLNN, Devil Sold His Soul, Rolo Tomassi
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram |

Label: Self-Released

Breaths is:
– Jason Roberts