PREMIERE: Consumer Ushers in the Apocalypse with “The Mills” and “In Computers Part 1”

The two-song pairing is the latest meditation on late capitalism from the Have a Nice Life side-project.
PREMIERE: Consumer Ushers in the Apocalypse with “The Mills” and “In Computers Part 1”

The two-song pairing is the latest meditation on late capitalism from the Have a Nice Life side-project.

Words: Mike LeSuer

photo by Sam Nikitas

October 09, 2019

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If the morbid post-punk incantations of Have a Nice Life aren’t representative enough of the end-times energy normalized post-9/11, Tim Macuga and members of his live band have formed Consumer—a like-minded collective focusing specifically on the apocalyptic sounds of capitalism. Where HANL sounds like the commodification of fear as primetime TV, Consumer sounds like corporations openly acknowledging climate change to move units.

Following the massive “Massive Subsidies,” Consumer are offering up the doomy twofer “The Mills” and “In Computers Part 1”—eleven minutes in total, the tracks rise to a synth-laced doom-metal dirge before unwinding into ambient unease halfway through. “‘’The Mills’ is an impression of redundant commodity and capital at work,” Macuga shares. “It was written in the winter of 2018 as a gesture towards the long defunct Slater complexes of south-central Massachusetts. ‘In Computers’ extends the meditation.”

In Computers is out October 25 via The Flenser. You can pre-order it—as well as the new Have a Nice Life album, out November 8—here