Become Death The Destroyer

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The acoustic guitar introduction to “All Bridges Burned” lasts just long enough for you to anticipate the addition of wintry synthesizers and ghastly field recordings. After all, the first 13 minutes of Withdrawal, the excellent new album by Brooklyn-via-Philadelphia black metal quartet Woe, are a torrent of animosity and unrest, with little relief intended or available. Opener “This is the End of the Story” is a six-minute span of negativity, every bit as dense as its title suggests. Its chaser, “Carried by Waves to Remorseless Shores of the Truth”, might be a stronger swill still, especially with frontman Chris Grigg groaning at the beginning as though he’s actually been washed to the wrong side of the Styx. This is battering and unfettered stuff, so it would seem logical for Woe to reveal a rest area. They do, but it lasts only as long as those 25 seconds of gentle, dulcet picking. Rather than indulge in atmosphere like many of their more ornate USBM peers, Woe simply counts off the beat and rips into a blitz once again. Call it a feint, a bait-and-switch or a tease if you must; just try and avoid whiplash if you can.

Most of Withdrawal flashes by with that same sense of determination, as though Woe are incapable of slowing down, of letting their fury smolder just long enough to glimpse it from above. Neither Grigg nor second guitarist Ben Brand take excessive solos, while the rhythm section of drummer Ruston Grosse and bassist Grzesiek Czapla stays decidedly on task, embedding their intricacies deep within these seven surges rather than apart from them. Perhaps that marked urgency is due to the feeling that Woe has to make up some time.

To wit, Grigg has written and recorded as Woe for six years now, first as a one-man-metal band and, on 2010’s Candlelight Records debut Quietly, Undramatically, with a quartet. The transition wasn’t a good one. Though Quietly, Undramatically had spans of promise, it also felt undecided, as though Grigg was trying to figure out how to use a full band now that he actually had one. Various lulls and tangents made it seem that Grigg was intimidated by the addition of this outfit, as though he were trying to push his music outward simply because now he could.

Consider the lost time salvaged, then: Withdrawal is an unforgiving record with an unbroken focus. These seven songs mostly stop only when they’re over. As a lyricist, Grigg erects a bleak, withering kingdom, where cities flood with poison, nihilism is a sharable confection, and, romantically, “the sum of virtue is rot.” Woe take these words as roadmaps, using them as the impetus for music that races ahead as though the end of the world is not only preordained but imminent. “Ceaseless Jaws”, for instance, concerns the fall of pride and, namely, the end of a relationship; the band plays like there’s little left to lose, waves of interwoven guitar cresting and slinking and wrapping through drums that move from heavy to heavier, with bass filling any open air with an intentionally muddy tone. The band pauses for 16 seconds at the song’s center, but that brief guitar miniature mostly underlines the heaviness of the entire trek.

This directness shouldn’t be mistaken as simplicity or, worse, historical facsimile. (We’d hate to disappoint our metallectual friends, you know.) It’s just that the intricacy of Woe’s music— and there’s plenty of it— doesn’t interfere with its immediacy. The brilliant “Song of My Undoing” begins with the sort of big, ebullient crossover blast that you might expect on recent Darkthrone albums. During these seven minutes, though, Czapla, who sings quite a bit here, counters the surge with a hook so soft it sounds like Alcest. Both parts serve as twin springboards into the song’s back half, when the thickness of those vocals and the wallop of the punk’n’roll funnel into a crucible of hardcore, black metal, and thrash. During “Carried by Waves”, Grigg races forward from the record’s most acrobatic solo with a rant-sized verse delivered with such gusto that it feels like a chorus— something you memorized and wait for when you listen back. It’s an ingenious way to drop a hook into a song where the tide seems much too troubled for such.

Within the United States black metal scene, Woe has peers that are certainly fancier— ones with longer, grander compositions that twist and stretch and spiral, and those that reach far outside of traditional guitars-drums-bass configurations to make their cases. But on Withdrawal, one of the young year’s most irrepressible and energized metal records, Woe plays with an urgency that suggests they have a chip on their collective shoulder and a point to prove. After Quietly, Undramatically, after all, Grigg recruited an almost entirely new lineup for Woe. Perhaps that’s why this quartet plays with such tenacity and economy. It’s hard to fire people doing their jobs this unabashedly well. 

- Pitchfork
  • 2 weeks ago


Internet platforms aren’t genres, and maybe it’s time to call a moratorium on treating them like they are. In 2006, when Charlotte Aitchison turned 14, she started recording a later-shelved album she has more recently disowned as “fucking terrible MySpace music.” Now, almost seven years later, her proper debut album as Charli XCX can hardly avoid comparisons to Tumblr, from fans and detractors alike. 

A simple misreading of the UK singer and songwriter’s biggest hit might explain this focus on technology-based shorthand. Swedish electro-pop duo Icona Pop’s 2012 global smash “I Love It”, co-written by Charli XCX but not on True Romance, emphasizes a generational divide: “You’re from the 70s/ And I’m a 90s bitch.” Sure, Aitchison was born in 1992, but her use of social-media formats also long frequented by droves of people born in the 1970s isn’t exactly remarkable in 2013. As that catchy kiss-off’s Republica-on-EDM wattage illuminates, Charli XCX is a would-be 90s pop star, too. And in only the best sense.

True Romance shares its title with an unbelievably well-cast 1993 movie written by Quentin Tarantino, who was reassembling cultural detritus way before mash-ups and microblogging. Charli XCX’s approach to pop is similarly postmodern (how 90s does that sound?), pulling from moody 80s synth-pop, sassy turn-of-the-millennium girl groups, and state-of-the-art contemporary producers to create something distinctive and immediately memorable. She clearly understands the internet, having shared two original mixtapes and two influences mixtapes before her official full-length, but this carefully pruned set is no data dump. And there you’ll see a glimmer of True Romance’s most throwback aspect: its evident pop ambition, an overriding sense of an imagined mass audience for music that’s radio-ready yet outsider-friendly. It’s almost like Napster— and the filler-crammed album sales model that preceded it— never happened.

In fact, by the time Charli XCX was a teenage electro-house devotee, illegal file-sharing’s early free-for-all had already given way to iTunes and other legal download services. Robyn had already released her self-titled comeback album. So it might be only natural that Charli XCX would keep the pre-bubble faith that people will pay for emotionally direct, bubblegum-catchy, yet stubbornly left-of-center songs about falling in and out of love. But the generous hooks on the previously released singles here, such as the gospel-kissed prechorus of the yearning “Stay Away” or the Santigold-savvy lilt of love-and-the-bomb brooder “Nuclear Seasons”, are extraordinarily welcome just the same. Even better are newer singles such as the gorgeously bitter “You (Ha Ha Ha)”, which inhabits its cloud-rappy Gold Panda sample like they were made for each other, and the almost-as-gorgeously blissful “What I Like”, which recounts a still-young relationship with the cheeky frankness of Lily Allen or the Streets, and the sing-songy near-rapping of the Spice Girls.

The several songs on True Romance that hadn’t previously surfaced in videos or other releases aren’t quite as strong, but they’re effective enough to suggest Charli XCX’s best work might still be ahead of her. The Todd Rundgren-sampling “So Far Away”, with the sun-dappled lushness of the Avalanches, is a clear highlight; Charli XCX’s vocals are usually plain-spoken, but the anguished break-up plea “Set Me Free” proves she can reach for Jessie Ware-like dramatics when appropriate. The pitch-shifting “no one is forever” intro added at the start of opener “Nuclear Seasons” probably should’ve been given its own track— and later on the album it is, when the same backing vocal forms the base of the cloudy, broken-hearted “Grins”. Elsewhere, the haunted confession “How Can I”, while solid enough, is a reminder that Charli XCX’s lyrics so far tend to fall relatively flat; when, on swooning finale “Lock You Up”, she sings, “It hits me like a ton of bricks,” she leaves the cliché untweaked.

And then there’s “Cloud Aura”, a lovelorn, engagingly laid-back bit of groove that lets Grimes’ “Genesis” video co-star Brooke Candy rap horribly about Chris Brown. Candy’s guest verse previously appeared on 2012’s uneven Super Ultra mixtape, and it was near-universally panned. It isn’t any better now. But in an era when too many up-and-comers are all too eager to please, this stubborn refusal to back down displays another quality in short supply: genuine irreverence. The songwriting and production credits on True Romance include Usher’s “Climax” co-conspirator Ariel Rechtshaid and “I Love It” collaborator Patrick Berger, among others, who also share some credit (and blame). But like 90s pop stars turned 10s pop sophisticates Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé, Charli XCX stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she’ll be worth following for a while. On Tumblr, Instagram, and whatever comes next, sure, but musically most of all.

- Pitchfork
  • 2 weeks ago


In a way, 2010’s Strange Weather, Isn’t It? was !!!’s coming-out party. After serving the dance-punk underground funked-up electronic jams with a wink ever since 2003’s excellent “Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story),” the Brooklyn sextet beefed up its beats and waved its disco flag with pride on its fourth album. On the fifth, Thr!!!er, !!! (still pronounced “chk chk chk”) shakes its groove things like it just stumbled on the secret to dance-floor happiness.

From the start, !!! wasn’t out to revolutionize dance-punk, though it was, along with LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, one of the first groups to revitalize the mostly forgotten post-punk offshoot at the turn of the millennium. The group falls somewhere between its two contemporaries—way more committed to sound and style than The Rapture, who seem to average one great song per album, but not nearly as consistent as LCD, whose three albums rank among the decade’s best.

Their aspirations are no higher on Thr!!!er, a groove-heavy cool-club record that never takes on more than it can handle. With most songs clocking in at about four minutes, it doesn’t waste too much time setting up or coming down; tracks hit the dance floor somewhere near top speed and end roughly around the same pace. It takes less than 10 seconds of the opening song, “Even When The Water’s Cold,” for a vocal to show up. That’s pretty efficient.

But that efficiency doesn’t leave much room for the push-pull release typically found in the best dance music. There aren’t too many curveballs on Thr!!!er. Besides the occasional falsetto, stray handclap, or wah-wah synth, almost everything here can be taken on face value. And sometimes it works magnificently, like on “Slyd,” which borrows its springy bassline from Chic, and on “One Girl/One Boy,” which features a hook sung by Sonia Moore, who pulled similar duty on MC Hammer’s “Too Legit To Quit.” But mostly it’s a passable dance hybrid climbing out of the underground and inching toward the mainstream, one wink at a time.

- The AV Club
  • 2 weeks ago


Given its title — and that I wrote a travel collection called Postcards From Elsewhere — how could we not be interested in this textured, electronica-cum-ambient outing from New Zealand’s Sheehan? And here he brings a real human warmth and some fascinating musical references from a wide palette to this, his first full length album since Standing in Silence about four years ago.

This is very different from Standing in Silence in that here he works with real instruments and musician  who include Jeff Boyle from Jakob, Andy Hummel (Rosy Tin Teacaddy), Steve Bremner (The Adults), Raashi Malik (Rhombus) and Ryan Prebble (The Nudge).

Most tellingly too are members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra string section who must have felt right at home when their contribution erred towards the late Romantics and the evocative soundscapes of Delius and Vaughan Williams. Not that these are direct influences, but their ethos of naturalism is certainly evoked in some glorious passages here where you can imagine William Turner clouds above a vast landscape (La Boite a Musique).

There’s also a playful quality at work too: the surface noise and use of a child’s instrument on the cheerful Little Sines and the cheap computer sound of Nocture 1985 where old school electronics finds its place within a piece which tickles along on repeated figures and astral blips and swathes.

Kieran_Rynhart_crop.1Creation Myths seems to invite in Asian elements (sounding like some $2 electronic version of the sound of a Japanese koto which gets increasingly distorted) and at times you sense a refreshing child-like wonder at the sounds possible from low-rent or lo-fi equipment (an impression enhanced by the cover art by Kieran Ryhart who clearly has a career in childrens’ book illustration).

So here are gentle floating pieces (A Thimble of Sorrow) morphing into evocative pieces which seem to have origins in wide-screen soundtracks (Nusquam is a cinematice string piece with melancholy undertones). And Fripp-Eno ambience co-exists easily with free-from-gravity passages of subtle beauty (Somnus floats in space but takes you perilously close to the capsule-melting sun at the end).

All these elements ease together into a rich, headphones-on whole and with subtle elelctrobleeps, this manage that rare feat of canny welcome-to-my-world humour while taking you on a long trip with many, various and often sublime digressions.

- Elsewhere
  • 1 month ago


Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse

Trevor Powers doesn’t come off as older and wiser than his 23 years: just look at any picture of him, with his slight build and cherubic mop of curls, or take one listen to his nasal, keening voice. Likewise, his heartfelt 2011 debut The Year of Hibernation dealt more in truth and honesty than profundity or authority, skirting cliché while affecting people in meaningful ways. These qualities are about the only things that haven’t changed for Youth Lagoon on Wondrous Bughouse. This record broadens Powers’ musical and lyrical scope into something universal in a literal and figurative sense, evoking the cosmos, heaven, and hell. But Powers sounds curious and awestruck rather than naïve, someone who explores this lush and frightening soundworld instead of explaining it.

The cosmetic changes are obvious. If you’ve been paying attention to sonics over the past couple of years, you’ll recognize the saturated, bottom-heavy production as that of Ben H. Allen. After hearing Allen give a subwoofer shape-up to previously brittle bands like Deerhunter, Animal Collective, and Washed Out, the pairing seems almost inevitable. But while the production is an upgrade, the real growth is thematic. Hibernation obsessed over escape and became defined by its limitations, whether it was its meager recording budget or just the sense that Powers felt trapped by his surroundings in Boise. But Bughouse looks inward and discovers the endless possibilities of imagination and introspection.

Youth Lagoon is still very much an internally-focused project and, with its abundance of effect pedals and stereo panning tricks, Wondrous Bughouse will likely be branded as a headphones album. Don’t believe it. As with Hibernation, this is a record that’s meant to be cranked as loud as possible; for one, volume decompresses these thick songs, amplifying the crucial addition of live drums on “Raspberry Cane” and “Mute”. More importantly, Wondrous Bughouse needs room to breathe from a songwriting standpoint. With Powers’ lyrics and Allen’s production striving to create a celestial whole, Bughouse is meant to conjure infinite space. 

This much is conveyed by the sonar blips that take up the three-minute opener “Through Mind and Back” before fading into the spellbinding “Mute”. Nearly every song on Hibernation began quietly, so it’s jarring to hear Youth Lagoon take a more widescreen turn— echoing drums, gleaming peals of delayed guitar, all washed by ocean spray reverb. This lasts for one minute before a detuned loop of bells recasts “Mute” as a juggernaut, a steady, booming drum beat framing a strident vocal performance from Powers, a guitar solo that recalls Doug Martsch’s expressive, longing leads, a minor-key piano loop that appears ready to take the song to a completely different plateau before cruelly cutting out. 

These songs are all bigger and bolder without being unnecessarily complicated. While Powers’ melodies are simple and immediately memorable like nursery rhymes, everything surrounding him is in flux. The songs on Wondrous Bughouse are continually subjected to flange and phase effects, and it’s not the gentle, headswimming “whoosh” that typified recent records such as Lonerism or mbv. The cranked oscillation gives these songs a proper sense of danger and hyper-alertness. The combination of the processing and Powers’ devious lyrics (“‘I won’t die easily’/ That’s what they say when I erupt into laughter”) gives the calliope-like melody of “Attic Doctor” a fitting, monstrous overtone. The synth progression that emerges during the anthropomorphic grotesquerie “Pelican Man” would be a perfect evocation of Elephant 6’s Beatles obsession, but the pulsing modulations turn into something closer to slasher-flick fare. 

It’s often scary stuff, more reminiscent of Syd Barrett’s bad-trip fairy tales. Though Powers isn’t dealing with death in a manner that conveys gravitas or experience, Wondrous Bughouse is very much about mortality, albeit filtered through surrealism, parable, and metaphor. Rather than a simple longing for the past, Powers feels obsessed with human frailty and decay. Similarly, the songs of Bughouse aren’t subject to tangents so much as following a dream logic working where any thought, regardless of how awesome or fearsome it is, doesn’t end until it reaches a conclusion it sees fit. 

Powers’ choice to write most of these fanciful flights in waltz time gives everything a properly anachronistic feel. The hopscotch melody on “Dropla” makes it sound like a playground chant and the lyrics see its narrator dealing with death in a selfish, forgivably childlike way, hanging on to faint hope (“you’ll never die, you’ll never die”) and lashing out when the prayers go unanswered (“you weren’t there when I needed”). Between the threatening taunts of “Attic Doctor”, we hear vast stretches of music for the Peanuts gang to ice skate to: “Third Dystopia” refracts a sea shanty through multiple funhouse mirrors; the submerged second half of “The Bath” places Powers somewhere between a baptism and a drowning. On “Raspberry Cane”, Powers sees himself as irredeemable (“I’m polluted by my blood/ So help me cut it out and rinse it down the drain”) and while closer “Daisyphobia” views humanity as “mortals on the run” from an all-seeing God, Wondrous Bughouse slinks towards an disturbing and unresolved conclusion, a slow fade of distant synth whinnies and stumbling, inexact beats.

Though unnerving, it is familiar, albeit in a style of indie rock that was prominent when Powers was, by his own admission, listening to Bad Boy records Allen might’ve played a part in. Think of the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, Modest Mouse, Built To Spill, all bands who in some way combined a projected naivety with grand designs: adolescent vocals picking at metaphysical mysteries, an insatiable curiosity with the capabilities of the studio. But Youth Lagoon is also a spiritual progeny in terms of geography. All these bands emerged far from media centers— Oklahoma City, upstate New York, Modesto, central Virginia, Issaquah, Wash., and of course, Powers’ own Boise. Listeners often try to discern something special about creating art in places like these, whether the scarcity of live shows and bands makes music more important or a lack of urban stimuli allows for deeper meditation on the big picture. Though the songs themselves are wonderful, that’s the powerful source Powers taps into here: if you feel like the dark center of the universe or simply need a little space, Wondrous Bughouse obliges.

- Pitchfork
  • 2 months ago


Braid/Balance and Composure Split

The trend forming in tours and releases these days of older, legendary bands of influence pairing up with their younger peers seems to be a win-win concept. Solidarity across scene history is formed, exposure of older fans to new music is encouraged, as well younger fans finding a gateway to being doing their homework in the family tree of alternative music. This month, Braid has partnered up with contemporary powerhouse Balance & Composure to release a split featuring two new songs from each of the bands, both who have gone several-to-many years without releasing a proper and whose fans are undeniably eager to hear something sonically new.

Braid’s contribution to the split begins with “Lux,” a trotting, fast-paced song that inspires an approving toe tap, yet never gets too ahead of itself. The entrance of time-signature breakaways that Braid has made notorious are not in short supply, either, as the song careens forward with winding vocal melodies weaving themselves into the fabric of the track. The guitar work is wiry and continues to carry the momentum until a series of fun, repeated vocal lines take over to close out the song with an escalating punch. The second song, “Many Enemies,” sounds like it could almost be a B-side from a Weakerthans record, with Chris Broach taking over for lead vocals and sounding suspiciously similar to John K. Samson.

The song structure is considerably more straightforward here, again reaching a point of escalation to close out the song with bouts of dissonant-sounding guitar and shouted vocal deliveries: “This is my city!” is the declarative cry. Braid certainly still knows how to write a fun, animated guitar riff and get their listeners heads’ tilted in interest, but some of the emotional drive that populated their releases of yore seems to be missing from the fold in this split. Regardless, it’s encouraging to see the resurrection of a band that holds so much influence over (deep breath) “emo” music, and these songs certainly have enough accessibility to them to open the door to past material for any younger listeners who may be interested.

Balance & Composure’s work for the split is undeniably darker and completely switches gears from the rollicking tone of Braid’s songs, as well as their first cohesive output since 2011’s Separation. The first song, “You Can’t Fix Me,” is bookended with excellence, opening with reverb-heavy kick and closing with a powerful coda and Simmons’ signature strained vocal cries. However, the bulk of the song seems to be fairly unfocused, lacking a strong refrain and never seeming to find its footing in terms of a palpable, graspable melody. The melancholy typical of Balance & Composure’s style is still present on both the tracks, but it’s far less formidable. “Say” exhibits a haunting back-and-forth vocal melody and is generally more entrancing, but the song still feels amorphous and too polished; kind of like taking a leisurely stroll through a garden instead of the intensity that would come from being chased down in one. The songs are clearly well-crafted and exhibit somewhat of a growth from past material, which, generally speaking is a good thing; however, the grit and rock-heavy foundation that made past Balance & Composure songs so intimidating just isn’t present.

- Property of Zack
  • 2 months ago


Summer of Haze - ∞ Screwee► Smok▲ ∞
  • 2 months ago


Ghosts - WLVS

Dublin’s haunted 2-step duo Ghosts appeared on the bass music radar in 2011 and 2012 with three self-released EPs. Their debut, Doxology, announced a fresh and experimental new voice, taking the 2-step template and building in metahuman, FX-drenched vocals. Sparse and beautiful, tracks like Isn’t It Funny, How I Knew and the luscious Open Your Eyes suggested a band with a firm grip on modern bass music, and a soulful, reflective approach to songwriting. The next EP, NIGHT, was an exercise in sparse, post-dubstep beats, timestretched vocal snippets and atmospheric field recordings, telling the story of a night on the tiles. Third EP Judge saw them embraced by the witch house/dark electronic community online, with the melancholic likes of It Still Hurts, the cold, Konami-sampling Sniper Wolf and the brooding, elegiac atmospherics of Grief and Sleep hitting all the correct pitch-black notes.

Back for 2013 with a new 4-track EP, to be released on vinyl and digital by Belfast’s Champion Sound, the pair are showcasing a much tougher, more upfront style. Title-track WLVS ups the tempo to the upper reaches of dubstep, clocking in at around 140 bpm and breaking from 2-step into pushing, hard-edged four-to-the-floor. The vocal, swathed in mechanical reverb and pushed back in the mix, is sexy and dark, conjuring images of hard gazes and harsh looks across smoke-filled, twilit dancefloors.

Escort Service maintains the uptempo pace and dark feel with clattering 2-step beats and interlocking, grime-influenced synth patterns, before dropping into a claustrophobic half-step breakdown. The City features dreamy, ethereal electronic shoegaze vocals, and is more familiar territory for fans of the early EPs – the exquisite, shimmering melodic progressions creating an emotional, spellbinding downtempo track. The utterly hypnotic Not Now My Love closes the EP in grand style, with the tempo pushed back to 140 bpm, and chopped, processed, treated vocals haunting the stark, sultry darkness of the beats and synths.

WLVS confirms Ghosts as one of the most exciting things to happen to UK garage and bass music over the past few years, strengthening their growing reputation with an EP that both develops their sound, pushing it forward, while simultaneously breaking new ground with their unique brand of dark, spectral bass. Combining strong songwriting with increasingly immaculate production, this is one to grab on vinyl, and leave at the front of the record bag.

- Future Astronauts
  • 2 months ago


Nails - Abandon All Life

As fans of heavy music, most of us have at some point had to preface mentioning a band with “I don’t know if you’re into this sort of thing, but…” This is a fact of life when discussing virtually any heavy or extreme music, but perhaps never more so than when discussing Nails. The American hardcore band has carved a niche for themselves by being as far from easy listening as one can possibly get, and their knack for unbridled misanthropy has reached new heights with the creation of Abandon All Life, their latest full-length.

Following up the aural assault that was Unsilent Death - Nails’ 15-minute maelstrom of an album from 2010 - Abandon All Life has expanded upon that formula to create a more evolved version of their unique brand of brash, noisy hardcore. While Unsilent Death only featured a single track longer than two minutes, Abandon All Life contains several lengthier tracks, and they use that extra length to create some truly impressive soundscapes.

Rarely does one find a band that can so effortlessly toggle between chaotic walls of blast-beat-supported noise and vast, rich sections of slow, sludgy guitar riffs. If you think Converge has the art of creating instantaneous chaos down to a science, you’ll be blown away by how deftly Nails manages a similar feat. Again, the nature of this dichotomy, and the narratives it allows Nails to construct within their songs, is greatly aided by their new-found penchant for longer tracks. Some may see this as straying from their grindcore-infused roots, but there’s no denying it helps them flesh out their structure and atmosphere in a big way.

Over the course of its ten tracks, Abandon All Life provides a roller coaster ride of dynamics and energy. From the relentless force of songs like “No Surrender” and the album’s title track, to the dark, ominous breakdowns on tracks like “God’s Cold Hands,” there’s very little about this album that will be predictable to most listeners. On the other hand, it’s not an album that makes too many attempts to hide its influences; this is unmistakably the product of the last couple decades of hardcore, grindcore and powerviolence, and it bears the marks of its forebears with pride.

At the end of the day, there’s very few reasons to miss out on this album if you’re a fan of the darker, heavier, dirtier side of modern hardcore. It wouldn’t be a stretch to accuse Nails of being deliberately obtuse at times, and there’s certainly some signs of this being an album that is inaccessible because its creators like it that way, but such intentions may well have aided in creating the unique beast that is Abandon All Life. Past the veneer of chaos and crushing heaviness that this album presents, there’s a whole lot of interesting stuff going on under the surface. Give it at least a couple listens before you dismiss it.

- Dying Scene
  • 2 months ago
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