Album Reviews
When founding (and only remaining original) member Bryan Torres started Death Lens in 2011, the band dealt in instrumental surf rock. But as times darkened and circumstances shifted, so too did the group’s purpose. The addition of vocals brought with it a sharpened focus on injustice and other than the album intro, there is little room for surf rock.
What’s Left Now? follows 2024’s Cold World, a record that felt urgent and unpredictable. The twelve tracks here are similarly shaped by political unease, though the band leaves more room for personal struggle as well. That’s clearest on the vulnerable Am I Drug To You, while Waiting To Know (featuring Militarie Gun’s Ian Shelton) addresses existential dread and self-doubt. Death Lens do pissed off as well though. Opener Monolith arrives like a call to arms, while you can almost taste the frustration in cuts like Pulling Teeth and snarling closer Debt Collector.
Yet What’s Left Now? never quite hits with the force you expect. Too often it feels like the band are revisiting that record’s most successful ideas and using them as a template, rather than building on them. And at points, the sharper edges are sanded down into something closer to a light version of Linkin Park than the punk urgency Death Lens are capable of.
What's Left Now track listing:
- Monolith
- Power
- Out Of My Skin
- Waiting to Know (feat. Militarie Gun)
- Drown
- Am I A Drug To You?
- Saints In the Panic Room
- Off The Edge
- Useless
- Last Call
- Pulling Teeth
- Debt Collector
Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.
