Music Seen: How To Destroy Angels’ “The Believers”

July 6th, 2010 by Dave Hnatiuk

How To Destroy Angels is (l-r): Trent Reznor, Mariqueen Maandig, Atticus Ross

Why I Luv It: Right out of the gate, the Los Angeles trio How To Destroy Angels can be directly compared to the best bands/artists representative of their experimental electronically based sound: Nine Inch Nails, Autechre, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Portishead, and Massive Attack are just a few to joggle your musical memory banks.

These artist comparisons suggest a lot considering “How to Destroy Angels’” six-track debut EP just came out in June 2010, and guess what, they’re giving it away for free on their website: http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/store/.

How can you not respect that type of maneuver in this dark day and age of our global economy??!! I mean, it was super cool when Radiohead did it with their “pay what you want” policy with the ’07 release of In Rainbows, but for a flat-out unsigned band to do it with their debut EP is a different story! For one, Radiohead was already extremely successful when they did it. How To Destroy Angels is just getting started, and they’re not asking for a dime of your money. Ok ok ok, Trent Reznor happens to be in this group, but still…it’s their debut! Just take the time to enter your email at the link above, and the EP is yours.

Smart arrangements, subtle film-score-like builds, gritty industrially influenced production, howling over-driven electric guitars, soaring synth-e-delic ambient textures, angelic yet demonic vocals, hammer of the gods-like drum sounds, and a FREE debut EP make How To Destroy Angels an automatic “YES PLEASE” for any serious fan of high-caliber intellectual music.

Scene I Can See it In: “The Believers” is the perfect song for two possible scenarios:

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1) A dense jungle or dusty hot desert scene in an “edge of your seat” drug cartel / 3rd world / sci-fi thriller similar to scenes in David O. Russell ‘s “3 Kings” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic.”
2) A bank robbery scene reminiscent of those in Michael Mann’s “Heat” or Kathryn Bigelow’s “Point Break.”

For the above scenarios, the nervous organic percussion-based introduction of the song from 00:00 to 00:40 relates directly to human primal emotion/fear of the unknown and a gradual build up of intensity that implies that, indefinitely, something big is about to occur. Once the distorted, industrially-influenced drums make their pounding entrance at about :40-:43, a certain “emotional / mental release” is brought on which suggests the occurrence of an “Ah ha” moment in the sense that something significant has been revealed visually.

This “reveal” in scenario 1 could be an entrance to a heavily militarized zone, prison camp, or some sort of secret drug trafficking or production facility.

In scenario 2, the “reveal” could be the entrance to the bank that is about to be robbed.

In both scenarios, the camera vantage point would be from the perspective of the intruders as they enter one the environments listed above, and this marries perfectly to the nervous/primal energy of the music and how it relates to the intent/motivation of the intruding characters on screen.

Beautifully demonic vocals make their entrance at 02:23, though for the purposes of these two proposed placements, I would use the song up until the vocals kick in, then use original score or an instrumental version of the song, and/or situational sound design, depending on how the scenes play out.

In summary, you have only to gain and nothing to lose by going and downloading your free copy of “How to Destroy Angels’” debut six-song EP today at http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/store/.

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