Empty Heaven – Laughing | Album Review
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Self-Released
Machine Gun Kelly goes pop-punk, Demi Lovato goes metal, Beyoncé goes country. (Taylor Swift goes… pop?) The lines of genre are constantly being blurred, even by some of the industry’s most prominent superstars. But digging into the underground, you’ll find plenty of bands who incorporate multiple styles on a single album or even within a single song that are usually filed far away from any mainstream recognition. Back in January, I reviewed the beautifully radical plastic death by glass beach, an album I commended for its risks, but unfortunately, I don’t see them having a shot at being the opening act on Post Malone’s grunge tour anytime soon. Now I find myself again with a piece of music so freeing, so intense, and so hard to pin down, that I wonder why it can’t be a King Gizzard-level sensation. I don’t think fame is the desire nor the intent of Anthony Sanders, the composer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist behind Empty Heaven. What I think the intent might be is to push his personal artistic boundaries until they snap, and in that regard, he made a seismic accomplishment with Laughing.
After a smattering of one-off singles and collaborative tracks, like the forgotten friend ballad “Ozzy” or the almost eponymous “Heaven Is Empty” featuring Jennie Lawless, Empty Heaven’s debut album Getting The Blues came out in 2021. Similarly to those early singles, the release was performed almost entirely by Sanders, save for a few additional vocal appearances. Whether or not it meant to, that album felt like a reflective collection as the world began its first steps out of the COVID-19 pandemic, lo-fi in moments and musically sporadic in others. Two years later, Sanders locked himself in once again while working on a cruise ship. Using the minimal gear he had with him, he recorded Enjoy Like A Pro, one of my favorite EPs of 2023. It was impressive and inventive how much he was able to convey from the confines of a cabin room, even going so far as to make a music video for the single “Don’t Worry, Be Happy 2” from his digs.
The premiere singles for Laughing, “End Times” and “Hauntology” made two things extremely clear: firstly, that this album was going to be Sanders’ most sophisticated release so far. Tricky time signatures, multi-faceted composition, and hyper-dynamic vocal delivery are key elements to both tracks. And secondly, there would be a noticeable throughline exploring laughter from all sides, as the idea is mentioned in the lyrics on both tracks and three more on the rest of the LP.
“End Times” laments, “I acted like a king, stood atop a mountain, convinced I had a kingdom that had somehow reached the thousands. Now I’m laughing… I’m not laughing” while “Hauntology” declaims, “Every particle’s a ghost of my life in slow motion. Some are every potential that I wouldn’t allow. Some I hurt for glory, and they’re laughing now.” Whether it’s laughter from power or via shame, Sanders thoughtfully journeys the concept from every possible entryway all throughout the album. I love how unrelentingly brash “Hauntology” is displayed, and it pairs well with the prettier presentation of “End Times.”
After the teaser introduction of “We’ll Never Laugh That Way Again,” the record properly kicks off with “We Don’t Want The Same Thing,” a post-genre tour de force with a Liturgy-inspired burst-beat drum performance that leads into a spoken word rock opera. Its challenging presentation could fall anywhere between the Coheed and Cambria to mewithoutYou spectrum of progressive-leaning emo music. There’s a delivery at about two and a half minutes in that is borderline rap metal and yet doesn’t feel forcefully experimental. The complexities of all the songs on Laughing are pure proof of intensive, methodical practice.
If you’re looking for more knockout rockers, Empty Heaven thankfully don’t stop with “Hauntology” or “We Don’t Want The Same Thing,” the album’s second half opens with “The Pattern Is The Pattern,” an anthemic, energy-building, arena-pop-punk showstopper. Sanders’ execution of the chorus could have been taken right out of a Dashboard Confessional track, and even the added guitar solo by guest vocalist Mark Jaeschke (Kittyhawk, Party’z) that finishes it all off reminds me of Matchbook Romance. This song could have easily been a third single, but it having it appear as a killer B-side moment was particularly exciting.
The next outside contribution on Laughing appears as “The Zero With 1000 Faces,” where Sanders’ wife, Nicolette Van Dielen, sings the chorus with him: “Hey, you feel a world away, but there's no world today; I woke up, and the sun was gone. I lost you to space and time, but I think you were a friend of mine, maybe my favorite one! But now, you're gone.” Other than this touching moment, Jaeschke’s solo on “The Pattern is the Pattern” and a flute guest spot from his sister Audrey Belliveau on “Pure This Time,” the album was otherwise performed exclusively by Sanders. Considering the intricacies that lie within every song here, as a fellow creative, his frustratingly high level of talent continues to sideline me with every listen.
“Someone Else’s Song,” begins like a shoegaze track on shuffle before moving into a tender folk verse, not far off from some of the latest Mountain Goats material. It lies in a time signature I can’t quite place, but it’s a wonderfully dizzying ride. Once the drums kick in, it becomes a bit more of a straightforward math rock rager, with Sanders pleading out: “I wanna feel like somebody else / I’m in the tall grass, in the tall grass; squint your eyes and see. / I’ll feel like anything, anything, just not like me.” His balance of aggression and melody on every piece of the album feels so perfectly assembled, like a Voltron of song-structure dynamics.
In 2022, I became fascinated with the idea of the “indie rock musical.” Two of my favorite albums of that year were Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road and angel in realtime by Gang Of Youths — artful, sprawling records with plenty of non-corny, musical theatre-adjacent moments. Laughing fits right into this distinction, and “Laughing Again” is exactly the finale that you’d expect to wrap the experience up. Sanders mentions “laughing” in all of its derivatives a total of 36 times across its seven-and-a-half-minute runtime, most of them anchored by the somewhat sinister refrain: “When I first died, I was laughing, then not laughing. Now I’m laughing again.” Despite it being the album’s longest track, musically, it doesn’t take quite as many turns as tracks like “We Don't Want the Same Thing” or “Hauntology.” The closer remains at a steady pace while leaning into some meta lyrics: “I’ve been altered by results of aborted cuts. I was born in Empty Heaven five years back. I’m what the demiurge could sculpt.” Mentions of “Heaven” run just behind “laughing” as the album’s core subject, but I believe this lyric is a direct reference to Sanders stating via his YouTube series that he plans to fully retire the project upon the album’s release. At least it will have to be after Empty Heaven’s only two slated live performances for the end of March 2024 in Sanders’ second home state of Texas.
Laughing is the culmination of five years of work for a band that had its ending written even long before I wrote this review. It seems borderline impossible that fans of any subgenre couldn’t find something to enjoy about it. I dream of the day more bands can be as unabashedly outgoing on an album as Empty Heaven is on this one. And if this truly is the ending of the project, I’m not laughing.
Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.
