Seven Crowns – Haunted Head
Seven Crowns – Haunted Head
Pale Wizard Records
Release date: 29/05/26
Review by: Jon Deaux
Score: 8/10 (since the value of their voicemail in Headstone is more than the combined value of any band’s collection, and I’m holding back the ten because a perfect score means there’s no place else to go, and Seven Crowns have never indicated that they ever want to stay where they are.)
Now, let’s start with the obvious. How can one review a grief album? Well, the genre – yes, because the grief album is as reliable a product type as “workout bangers” or “coffee shop acoustic” – has an invincible aura around itself. Say a single word less than ecstatic, and you’ll be accused of insensitivity and dancing on the graves of those who died. Say anything more than that, and you’ll compose a sympathy card for them, which won’t make you a journalist either. What we have here, therefore, is a third way of telling you that ‘Haunted Head’ is among the most brutal albums you will hear this year, and that has nothing to do with Seven Crowns creating an album amid the death of their loved ones.
For some perspective, because the band’s done enough already to deserve a separate paragraph. They formed in 2006 in the UK West Country and quickly left the country. The band’s first live performance was in New York, where they supported Subhumans, and then they spent six weeks in Southeast Asia. Interestingly, Seven Crowns became the first Western band to perform in Sulawesi since Kool & The Gang performed in the region for Suharto in 1981, and that was such a precise detail that even checking it seemed necessary. Well, let’s not – if they didn’t do that, reality has ceased to exist, and it won’t prevent me from going further with my review.
For two decades, the band has toured nonstop throughout North America, Central America, mainland Europe, New Zealand, and everything in between. If you need to spend a month in Indonesia before believing them when they say that they prefer a Bremen squat to a venue with a hospitality rider, they will be happy to arrange such an exchange program. And after the band arrived in New Zealand and felt like they finished touring – probably, that’s what they talked about at the end of the last show – they started focusing on studio recordings.
And here we are, to introduce ‘Haunted Head’ – six songs recorded within four years during which, according to the band, “an alarming number of our family and friends died”. Not a lament album, as they claim, but rather a love letter. The differentiation might seem pointless, but in this case, they deserved the distinction.
The album was recorded in Bath’s Stage 2 Studios by Josh Gallop. Incidentally, Bath used to be the hometown of the Romans’ most politely passive-aggressive residents, who threw the Roman curse tablets into the sacred spring of Sulis Minerva because someone stole their sandals. Inheritance, therefore, and the band lives to its heritage by transforming grief into velocity in a manner few others could achieve. Their self-described heavy psychedelic punk is huge, combining the Bad Brains ferocity with the Black Sabbath dread and the NEU!’s motoric pulse. Underneath this, you can feel My Bloody Valentine’s dissolutions, together with Poison Ideals’ spite in some lower frequencies, muttering something inaudible.
‘Haunted Head’ begins with its namesake track with no warning at all – which, incidentally, is appropriate. Grief doesn’t warn you, so neither should a song inspired by it. But then ‘Headstone’ comes and Seven Crowns manage to put into the record something absolutely shocking. There is a voicemail message in the song; in actual life, it’s a recording of the voice of a beloved family member, inserted into the production. It’s not clear whose voice it is, but the very fact is what makes the track so powerful – they thought the right thing to do with their beloved’s recorded voice was to insert it in the production and share it with complete strangers. No matter how many times I tried playing it again, it turned out to be too much for me – I had to stand in my garden for a little while, because there wasn’t any other explanation for the feeling.
After this, ‘Ways To Be Gone’ and ‘Acts of Mindless Kindness’ appear as a couple in the middle of the record. The former is brutally beautiful, and for the latter, this is the kind of title that would be impossible to write without spending twenty years in the scene to be able to call a rose by a rose. The phrasing is an art in itself: it’s the kind of lyrics you notice three months after the first hearing and think to yourself that there’s nothing else to be done. It’s also the kind of title that you would want to read to anyone over the phone, so that they understand why it’s so good, except for the one who hangs up.
‘Side Effects’ is the final single, released on Beltane, an ancient Celtic festival of summer coming, when our ancestors used to light the fires on hills, drive their cattle between the fires to purify them, and then argue over who brought the firewood.
The release isn’t accidental; Seven Crowns knows exactly what they do. Grief, in other words, is also seasonal, repetitive, never-ending, and cyclic, as it becomes the weather that you know how to dress for, in the long run. The single is the most vivid song on the record – still huge in its magnitude. The video for it was shot by Kieran Gallop of GLK Media, the person who also worked with Sleep Token, which either means the guy is versatile or that heavy music in Great Britain is dominated by a small group of musicians who know each other, but hey, this works great anyway.
The album ends on ‘Some Are Broken, Some Are Lost’ – the title working as both taxonomy and mercy. Some things are broken and thus fixable, and some others that are lost forever and unfixed. No moral lesson, though; Seven Crowns doesn’t offer judgments but observations. It’s over now; there’s silence following it that appears to be deeper than the silence preceding it, which is the surest sign of a quality work of music. Most of the records are listened to the way we eat food that we dislike and push away after that – that’s the one that’s staying somewhere inside you and becoming a part of your life.
The most remarkable thing about ‘Haunted Head’ is the discipline – six songs and that’s it. Compare this to the current tendency to record seventeen tracks because streaming algorithms reward long records, filling the second half with instrumental tracks that sound like a laptop turning off. Seven Crowns know how to avoid such cliches, thanks to two decades of touring outside the mainstream logic; the result is similar to the party’s guest leaving after a short time in order to sleep well. The melodic instrumentations they use on this album aren’t a sacrifice to the masses’ needs but another step towards emotional precision, where the musician uses the right tool to do his job. Sometimes, he uses beauty.
Is ‘Haunted Head’ the most entertaining punk album of the year? Probably not. But the sincerest? Surely, and the latter is what counts in Seven Crowns, who spent their career fighting comfortable choices. They went to Sulawesi, they finished touring and realized that it was enough. Now, they run the B.O.B. Festival in three countries of two continents, rotating between Bremen, Oakland, and Bath, which makes this organization either extremely effective or extremely inefficient, but that’s the point. Finally, they bury their people and produce an album that refuses to recognize their people as gone.
Seven Crowns make music as a leisure activity, now, and this is how the leisure looks when a person knows what he’s doing and plays for the right cause.
TRACKLISTING:
- Haunted Head
- Headstone
- Ways To Be Gone
- Acts of Mindless Kindness
- Side Effects
- Some Are Broken, Some Are Lost
LINKS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sevencrowns
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sevencrownsuk
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Jon Deaux and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
