Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Nothing - Guilty of Everything (2014)

With the opening notes of this album ("Hymn to the Pillory"), I thought I had picked up the wrong album. About 90 seconds later... the pounding begins. Order has been restored.

"Hymn" is an interesting cross of ethereal dream pop one moment, thundering guitar rawk the next. It's a delicate balance, which they pull off deftly.

And the rest of the album has that My Bloody Valentine feel, although this is not shoegaze (in my book at least). It's more like really heavy emo, or really atmospheric metal. But however my limited vocabulary fails in describing this, the fact remains that this is just a great, plugging along album. It is not dissimilar from Bob Mould's Black Sheets of Rain -- an album-long dirge with moments of pop sunshine. (Anyone who know me knows this comparison alone is high praise.)

Nothing - "Bent Nail"

I actually think this is going to have a strong cross-sectional appeal -- I think Jesu fans like Martin, MBV fans like Scott B., Mould BSOR fans like Denis, Goes Cube fans like Matz, and general metal fans like Bubba will get into this one. It's got a lot of things going right for it.

CD Placement rating:  Car iPod.

- Snilch

2 comments:

rappard said...

It's hardly metal, and it's waaay to "uptempo" (for want of a better word) to compare to Jesu. I'm reminded more of 90s Creation bands like Swervedriver.

Denis said...

I like your description -- and I totally agree with the Swervedriver comparison. Nice.