Death From Above 1979 lives

At first, bassist Jesse Keeler worried that someone had died when he saw his former bandmate Sebastian Grainger’s name in his inbox. Neither had spoken to the other during the five years since the collapse of their lauded dance-punk duo, Death From Above 1979. Upon reading the email, Keeler was surprised to find no one had died. Instead, Grainger was reaching out for a chance at reviving a defunct band with only one album and a rabid fan base that clamored for more.

The band had never run its proper course. Its career trajectory was like that of a comet brilliantly exploding across the night sky, leaving nothing but vivid memories of its existence in the minds of those lucky enough to catch a glimpse.

Death From Above 1979 started playing shows in 2001, right when the concept of blog buzz was a new force in the music industry. The two friends were broke, jamming throughout Toronto with only a drum set, vocals, a bass guitar, and a synthesizer. With those sparse instruments, Keeler and Grainger developed a monstrous style of grating, libido-amping bass riffs and pulsating drums charged with an equal balance of aggression and groove. The duo quickly grew from 20-somethings playing house parties to fighting for air in the first wave of the unforgiving Internet hype machine.

“We had to learn that it was OK to say no sometimes,” Keeler says. “You don’t want to do anything to ruin your luck when you’re younger, so when the people who booked us were telling us something was a great idea, at a certain point we had to ask, ‘When have I fucking been home?’”

The band was playing every show it could land, regardless of the pay. As a result, play started to feel more like work for Keeler. His father, also a musician, repeated a sage piece of advice that he wished his younger self had understood. “Be careful that music becoming your job doesn’t ruin it for you,” Keeler says. “If you ruin the enjoyment of playing then you ruin the output, and it’s not worth it to allow that to ruin music for you.”

Even though Death From Above 1979 has learned its lesson of balancing work and play, Keeler still wishes someone would remind him of that bit of advice, “all the time, literally every week,” he says.

The duo’s original run from 2001 to 2006 produced only one document of its lawless aesthetic, titled You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Yet after Death From Above 1979 announced its demise, the LP found a renewed life on its own. New fans stumbled upon the record, thanks to references from other bands, such as CSS’ “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above,” and remixes of the debut album from the likes of Justice, Alan Braxe, and Queen of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme.

It took a literal riot for Keeler to realize how many people demanded more. The first reunion show happened during SXSW 2011, when a mass of fans blocked off by a flimsy fence rushed inside the venue. Attendees were trampled, police Tasers flashed, and somehow a horse was punched in the face. Death From Above 1979 was back.

No new music was planned at first, but in 2012 the duo performed new material and announced that a second album was in the works. A decade after You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine shell-shocked the collective worlds of dance and punk, the duo finally produced its second deafening love child, The Physical World.

Despite the 10-year gap, The Physical World sounds barely a year apart from its predecessor. During the duo’s hiatus, both members branched off into their own musical territories. Keeler explored pounding electro as half of the duo MSTRKRFT, and Grainger followed differing veins of rock in a number of projects. It is difficult to imagine the two spent any time apart over the last 10 years, as the songs from their latest album maintain all of the unruly, bare-knuckle brilliance of Death From Above 1979’s early years.

Now that the group has reached greater levels of success, and Keeler has a family to look after, how does he know Death from Above 1979 won’t spiral into the same overworked implosion? “It’s different now when we walk into a record label because we’re walking in there with all of our fans and all the stuff we’ve done, and they know that we’ve done it all without them,” Keeler says.

After Keeler read Grainger’s first communication in five years, he had to ask himself if the thrashing youth that founded Death From Above 1979 was still alive inside of him. “I had to see if I could still do it,” he says. “As far as I can tell, we’ve gotten even better.”