Band:	Currents
Album:	The Death We Seek
Style:	Djent, Metalcore
Website:	http://https://currentsofficial.com/
Release date:	May 2023

01. The Death We Seek
02. Living In Tragedy
03. Unfamiliar
04. So Alone
05. Over And Over
06. Beyond This Road
07. Vengeance
08. Gone Astray
09. Remember Me
10. Guide Us Home

I imagine most music fans have a few artists that they generally do not enjoy, but find one song that they click strongly with; the concept of a ‘one-hit wonder’ relies on this scenario. It’s easy enough to accept the one-off flukiness of such a situation; what’s more frustrating is when there’s 2 or 3 songs from a band that play perfectly to one’s interest, but then a failure to repeat this success with their other material. For me, one example of this is Currents.

I mentioned in my recent review of the new Invent Animate album that I found myself re-engaging with metalcore around 2017 after Periphery and Monuments rekindled an interest in the genre. When trying to uncover what was hot in the scene at that time, one album I stumbled upon with considerable hype was the recently released The Place I Feel Safest by Currents. The album, which kept in line with the djent-heavy trend for the genre that still remains strong today, wasn’t generally the most rewarding discovery for me in that period, but it did feature two consecutive songs in its tracklist that gripped me and have done so ever since, namely “Night Terrors” and “Delusion”. To this day, I remain bemused by how much I can enjoy these two songs, while finding little else to connect with in a discography that has remained pretty consistent stylistically throughout; new release The Death We Seek offers the latest opportunity for Currents and I to rectify this situation.

On reflection, what I enjoy about the two songs I highlighted in the previous paragraph are their speed, the darkness of their tone, and how their clean vocal sections aren’t just tender choruses, but either more ominous or more cathartic, in the case of the climax of “Night Terrors”. These points were slightly lacking across much of The Place I Feel Safest, but arguably more so on 2020’s follow-up release The Way It Ends, an album that expanded the use of electronics by Currents, relied a lot on bad cop verses/good cop choruses, and, particularly in its second half, devoted quite a lot of time to softer, cleaner passages. The Death We Seek differs from The Way It Ends on at least one front, with electronics moved more onto the back-burner, but despite this, it’s still an album with a pretty heavy emphasis on melody.

Riff-wise, Currents’ guitarists (who include Chris Wiseman from Shadow Of Intent, although his presence to newcomers might only be recognizable due to the vocals in the chorus of “Gone Astray”) continue to worship at the altar of djent on this new album, the opening title track kicking immediately into a gnarly mid-tempo downtuned groove. Outside of the riffs, the guitars also add in some nice lead guitar motifs, including a pleasant melodic hook repeated in multiple moments of “The Death We Seek”, along with moments of ambience, such as at the end of this track, although they’re not quite as frequent in incorporating such passages as Invent Animate. There’s also some solid soloing that can be found, with a particularly satisfying one midway into “Unfamiliar”, and, as expected for a metalcore band, there’s a breakdown every now and then.

On the plus side, this is a relatively catchy album; each song has a fairly memorable chorus to it, with some of the stronger examples heard in the more up-tempo “Over And Over”, the Wiseman-featuring “Gone Astray”, and the evocative “Remember Me”. There’s also a respectable selection of riffs across The Death We Seek, between a lively, technical lead guitar riff opening “Unfamiliar”, a meaty groove in the verse of “So Alone”, and a nice atmospheric breakdown in closing song “Guide Us Home” that’s followed up by another good solo. On the whole, I’m enjoying The Death We Seek considerably more than The Way It Ends; in some ways, it reminds me of the Polaris debut The Mortal Coil, perhaps the most satisfyingly hooky melody-focused metalcore albums I’ve encountered since my interest in the genre was reignited. At the same time, I can’t help but realize that I’m not really engaging with this record at anything more than a ‘decent background listening’ level; there’s something about The Death We Seek that I find just so... vanilla, for lack of a better word.

Those fond enough of Currents to be familiar with “Night Terrors” and “Delusion” will probably be able to recognize why I’m not getting the same response here when they listen to this new record; there’s nothing like the same darkness appearing with any kind of regularity here, with “Vengeance” the only consistently extreme song here (eschewing cleans altogether), and even that song lacks the same kind of speed and directness. However, disregarding early Currents, there’s still underwhelming aspects of The Death We Seek when I compare to an arguably more suitable benchmark such as The Mortal Coil.

Chief of these is the real sense of saminess that emerges at certain points; the string of songs from “Living In Tragedy” through to “Beyond This Road”, with the possible exception of “Over And Over”, feels like the same ground is being repeatedly covered, lower-energy choruses resembling one another with no late-song emotional climaxes. Without variety in approach, without songs that progress towards an exciting climax that isn’t just a straight reprise of the chorus, without a wider emotional palette that varies the vibe between tracks, songs struggle to stand out, and no real sense of catharsis is achieved. The closest I get to clicking with a specific song is “Gone Astray”, partially due to some tasty grooves in the verse, but mostly because Wiseman’s contribution helps to at least somewhat differentiate the chorus from the others on The Death We Seek.

Otherwise, the end result of this album is a competently made one, and one that makes for perfectly pleasant listening, but it just lacks for me in terms of compelling emotions and moments of excitement that inspire the kind of passion that makes music truly memorable. That’s what Polaris were capable of on The Mortal Coil (and less so on their sophomore) despite similarities in style to The Death We Seek, it’s what Currents managed to achieve on those two songs I’ve highlighted as exceptions, but it’s that lack of range and standout resonant moments that’s thus far held me back from otherwise clicking with the band’s disography.