''Peaceful as Hell'' is the fourth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by Canadian

noise pop Noise pop is a subgenre of alternative and indie rock that developed in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom and United States. It is defined by its mixture of dissonant noise or feedback with the songcraft more often found in pop music. Shoegazi ...

duo Black Dresses. It was released on April 13, 2020, the two-year anniversary of their first studio album ''

Wasteisolation ''Wasteisolation'' (stylized in all caps) is the debut studio album by Canadian noise pop duo Black Dresses, released on April 13, 2018. Recording and release The album was recorded between late 2017 and early 2018 and was created entirely ...

'', under Blacksquares Records. It was preceded by the lead single of the album "Creep U" which was released on April 7. The album was the duo's last album before their announced disbandment in May 2020 due to harassment of the band following their unexpected success on platforms such as

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

. Despite this, they released a follow-up record, ''

Forever in Your Heart ''Forever in Your Heart'' is the fifth studio album by Canadian noise pop duo Black Dresses. Released on February 14, 2021 by Blacksquares Records, it was their first album since the band broke up in May 2020 just weeks after the release of their ...

,'' the following year.

Style and themes

Musically, ''Peaceful as Hell'' is an electronic album with elements of

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...

, glitch,

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...

pop Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' (G ...

and

pop-punk Pop punk (or punk pop) is a rock music genre that combines elements of punk rock with power pop or pop. It is defined for its emphasis on classic pop songcraft, as well as adolescent and anti-suburbia themes, and is distinguished from other pu ...

music. The album contains features such as heavy metal riffs,

white noise In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines, ...

, compression, and narration. It also explores themes such as

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imager ...

, self-knowledge, being

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

dissociation Dissociation, in the wide sense of the word, is an act of disuniting or separating a complex object into parts. Dissociation may also refer to: * Dissociation (chemistry), general process in which molecules or ionic compounds (complexes, or salts) ...

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

, and social connection.

Reception

In a positive review for ''Pitchfork'', Leah Mandel felt the album was more accessible than previous Black Dresses albums and described it as "fun and loud as hell", concluding "Especially with the world’s hellishness currently blaring at us, every social disparity spotlighted and exacerbated, loneliness and doubt deepened to an extreme degree, ''Peaceful as Hell'' is perfect medicine." The album was Canadian rapper

Backxwash Ashanti Mutinta, known professionally as Backxwash, is a Zambian-Canadian rapper and producer based in Montreal, Quebec. She is most noted for her 2020 album ''God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It'', which won the 2020 Polaris Music ...

's favourite album of 2020. Writing for ''Complex'', she described the album as "incredibly sincere and very deliberate" and said that "The lyrical content can be unsettling at times, but the instrumentation gives you hope, as a listener, almost as if it is saying, "Life can be hard, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.""

Anthony Fantano Anthony Fantano ( ; born October 28, 1985) is an American music critic and YouTuber who runs the YouTube channel The Needle Drop and its tie-in website. He discusses and reviews music from a variety of genres in his YouTube videos and on his we ...

of ''The Needle Drop'' said of the album "Black Dresses mercilessly kills us with kindness on ''Peaceful as Hell''", later placing it in third place on his list of the best albums of 2020. The song "Mirrorgirl" was included in ''

The Fader ''The Fader'' (stylized as ''FADER'') is a magazine based in New York City that was launched in 1999 by Rob Stone and Jon Cohen. The magazine covers music, style and culture. It was the first print publication to be released on iTunes. It is o ...

Style and themes

Reception

Accolades

Track listing

References