There’s that looming worry with all of our favorite bands. After a certain point in a band’s trajectory, we may not having anything new left to say about their music. It may not be that they’ve creatively slouched and their output has suffered from it, but consistency by their own hand can be the plague.

With Death Is Nothing to Us, Fiddlehead arrive at full-length effort #3 after already giving the scene two classics-on-arrival in 2017’s Springtime and Blind and 2021’s Between the Richness. The band, led by former Have Heart frontman, Pat Flynn, alongside a supergroup of sorts in Flynn’s former bandmate in drummer Shawn Costa, guitarists in Basement’s Alex Henery and Big Contest’s Alex Dow, and bassist Nick Hinsch of Nuclear Age and Stand off, has in turn always felt fully formed with their scene vet version of melodic hardcore crashing onto slabs of grungy alternative and heavier indie rock with a big existentially emotional weight thrown down onto it. Individual grief comes in all forms and has been the thread that has bound their music together, and in turn their relationship with its listeners.

On the third chapter, Fiddlehead embrace the proverbial other side of this life no less darker — perhaps even all the more intense, and more profound. In accepting fates that which you cannot control, there’s an unstoppable freedom to be heard in Flynn’s acknowledgements of it all, and this becomes the difference maker on this go-round the sun that comes not in the form of any critic-baiting directional shift, but rather a morbid celebration of being alive in lieu of what will come for us all, continuing to thrust Fiddlehead’s art into the thing of undying legend status by cementing themselves as among the most hyper-aware of the true modern human experience.

Working once more with producer Chris Teti, the band has refined their execution of fury to be more bold-font and loudly executing in its goosebumps-spiking friction even within obtuse bouts of grief (“The Woes”, “Going to Die”) and depressive spells (“Sleepyhead”, “Fiddleheads”.) There’s the occasional “smaller” moments of glory (“True Hardcore [II]”, “Fifteen to Infinity”) that equate to bigger, important memorials of connection in the long run of life that aren’t ignored either. That balancing act of nature taking its course is rendered as something both frightening and beautiful.

On the up and up, the Boston post-hardcore rockers are barreling harder than ever into the void, doing their most to avoid it, and making every second count for us all when our time is finally up.

Highlights: “Sleepyhead”, “True Hardcore (II)”, “Going to Die”

Fiddlehead’s Death Is Nothing to Us is available now on Run for Cover Records.

Buy | Stream