ALBUM REVIEW: Microwave – “Death Is a Warm Blanket”

By Erika Kellerman

Pure Noise Records (PNR) has been pumping out sadboy™ albums for as long as I can remember. The bands they sign produce songs and albums I imagine most listeners sit in the dark, crank up the sound until they can’t hear themselves think anymore, and just let out a big sob while bobbing their head along to the sometimes upbeat beat, in the most juxtaposed way. 

In all seriousness, these kinds of albums heal and square away feelings of loneliness, sadness and anger. They help listeners cope and get their feelings together, sometimes ones they didn’t even know were underlying.

Atlanta rock band Microwave added to the sadboy™ mix this week with their third LP titled Death Is a Warm Blanket via PNR. Death Is a Warm Blanket is none-the-less a nostalgic feeling therapy session wrapped in a little over a half-hour of grunge and scream-rock.

“Leather Daddy,” the first song off of the LP, is a trickster of an introduction to Death Is a Warm Blanket. It’s the expected acoustic start off to an indie-punk album, but it grows into its loudness, tenderness, and grittiness. Screaming takes the place of an almost whisper vocal, like its ready to erupt into something more; sounding like Kurt Cobain over electric guitar at one point. It sets the tone for the rest of the album, for only a moment, but once the listener gets to “Float to the Top,” the tone is flipped on its head.

This album is for those who are struggling or feel like they’re drowning in anger, sadness, or sorrow. “DIAWB,” the third on the track list, is about dealing with the loss of autonomy- dealing with becoming sick and not being able to do anything about it or the helpless feeling of wanting to get better, but not having the resources to do so. The heaviness that lays beneath this song hits listeners in the chest, almost instantly with the last line of the song “(bury me)/ I don’t want to feel.”

“Pull” replayed a few times before I finished the album for the first time. The track starts off slow and builds on the guitar that echoes in the background. “Pull”’s defining lyrics, “I was waiting on it to get easier/ I’m still waiting it out” and “you don’t have to be happy to be loved” are the almost silver lining of Death Is a Warm Blanket. They are delicate and tiny slivers of hope, a rock-n-roll kind of reminder that things might be okay in the end. Reality sets in once again as the track passes, circling back to the theme of life imploding before one’s own eyes.

All in all, Death Is a Warm Blanket doesn’t have a moral to its story. It’s dealing with pain and wanting the pain to be over in the present tense. The album bleeds truth, allowing itself to be angry and angrier as it went on, savoring the broken and confusion of suffering. Microwave created ten tracks that fit together like a messed up puzzle. It’s not perfect, mirroring the world they wrote lyrics about, but I didn’t want it to end.