Nadja - Excision

As any follower knows, Nadja have an extremely high musical output rate. But you couldn’t blame them for milking commercial teats as it’s almost all been original music. Over God knows how many albums during the ten years since their conception Nadja have released only three compilations and four live albums – a drastically small percentage of their discography, with the majority made from full-length albums. So it’s nice to see this platter of previously limited vinyl-only releases “excised” and made available to a wider audience. There’s a good chunk of listening to do here over two CDs with the total run-time coming to two hours, thirty-four minutes, and forty-one seconds.

Excision gives us a good cross-section of Nadja’s broad array of doom/drone stylings. It opens with “Jornada del Muerto”, not the strongest track on the album, but a crushingly heavy piece of glacial doom that is as close to SunnO))) as Nadja have ever been. “Perichoresis” has a more progressive approach, moving through stages of ambient, post-sludge drone and noise. This song is truly epic and melancholy and is a pretty damn good example of how powerful Nadja can be. “Spahn” provides a more stripped-back, deep space excursion. “Kriplyana” is pure ambient drone, sharing more in common with the likes of Gavin Bryars than doom metal. Swapping CDs “Autosomal (Version 2)” builds up with ten minutes of snail-paced post-rock before a dream-like tide of swirling distorted doom gushes forth, a tsunami in slow-motion. On “Kitsune (Fox Drone)” we bathe in heavenly static; this track is trademark Nadja droning bliss. “Autosomal (Version 3)” is more ambient drone, this time on the noisy, psychedelic side, excellent for a twisted chillout. with “Clinging to the Edge of the Sky” concludes with fifteen minutes of peaceful post rock.

There are no outstanding criticisms to make; it’s overly long and the songs don’t join together at the seams naturally, but that’s to be expected from this kind of compilation. Standalone, each song is pretty strong but I think this is really meant for fans only, specifically ones who missed out on the limited edition original pressings of this music. If you want to be introduced to Nadja, I’d recommend starting somewhere a little more spectacular like Corrasion, or Skin Turns to Glass. Excision is still a quality buy if you find it cheap or something, though.

In short: It’s not an essential Nadja album, but for the fan who wants to delve deeper into their massive body of work, Excision is a worthwhile way to relax in style for a while.

Standout tracks: “Perichoresis”, “Autosomal (Version 3)”

Score: 7.5

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Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Lights

Music is the imprint of man’s soul into sound. Bands resemble the lives of human beings. The older we get, the more we mellow out (one can’t abuse oneself forever), and often we will have a resurgence of energy in or just past our middle age. While Woods of Ypres have always been melancholy, this is their most soul-filled and reflective album yet. Unfortunately it looks like Woods of Ypres is a band that will never have the opportunity for that nostalgic return to the more energetic excitements of youth that many bands experience, as lead singer and guitarist, and mastermind of the band, David Gold regrettably passed away in a car accident four days before Christmas last year. Yes, another legend has gone, but not soon enough to miss leaving behind a heroic legacy of records the last of which had been recorded, but not yet released at the time of his death. This record is Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Lights, and it is going down in history, and not simply because people worship the dead, as according to David they should not, but because this is a masterpiece of metal and a profound realization of style and emotion. For the listener, David’s death only serves as a cruel irony when we hear the brilliance of this perfectly composed work that is about death itself, life, and society.

As inferred earlier, Woods have largely traded much of their extreme metal aggression in favor of their softer gothic rock/metal sound, an element which had also been there for a long time. But where Type O Negative give us the sexually charged, sensual tones of this style, Woods of Ypres give us passionate solemnity, thoughtful reflection, and serious philosophies. Pigeonholes and comparisons aside, though, what we have here is music of the utmost quality in terms of musicianship, song-writing and lyrical craftsmanship. I personally am not a huge appreciator of metal lyrics in general; in general they are not what attract me to the genre. I find combining two art forms (poetry and song) together in this way is a difficult thing to do, especially in a genre as gloriously over the top as metal. I preferred to place emphasis on the music itself. That was, until I listened to Woods 5. The lyrics on this album are beautiful, intelligent and cut to the core of so many problems that the soul faces in the modern world. Gold’s voice enunciates the wonderful poetry with great clarity in all forms of his voice, making it impossible to ignore and inevitable to sing along with.

There is no real weak point on the album. From beginning to end, Woods 5 shines brilliantly and radiates a various maturely captured shades of melancholy. There is nothing depressing about this masterpiece, however, instead it is the perfect reflection, a tool to organize and sort your emotions and thoughts, and thus a highly useful and important piece of art. Woods make perfect transitions between gothic, doom and black metal, allowing a series of shattering climaxes to develop over the course of the hour-long runtime. It has often been said that it is more difficult to write a good simple song than a good complex one. Another possible way of viewing this is that simple songs rely on more complex emotions - things people find extremely hard to control, let alone fuse successfully with music and poetry. Like all the greats of rock music before them (in my opinion), Woods of Ypres have mastered the deceptive craft of simplicity – the artistic vehicle of true passion.

It took me a long time to review this album, and while I haven’t said anything particularly profound about it, I needed to know that the power of the music was genuine and held at least some longevity. I was also aware of the way that recently deceased artists inspire sympathy in people and not always because of the quality of their work, and I didn’t want to let bias inflect my opinion. As I saw how the album was affecting me more increasingly with every listen, I thought it was too good to rush into and worship, too good not to consider thoughtfully before praising. After many listens, I believe I know it well enough to confirm that Woods 5 is the real deal – a living, human thing and an album that will be remembered for decades to come as a classic.

In summary: If you like your metal endowed with great beauty and feeling, this is a must. If you like it when your metal has something to say about the concrete world rather than venturing into the escapist realms that the genre is so heavily based upon, this is a must. For me personally, it’s the best album I’ve heard this year so far. A work of sublime craftsmanship; an album for rainy days and hard times; a cure for suffering; a vital medicine for the modern age.

Standout tracks: “Death is not an Exit”, “Adora Vivos”, “Silver”, “Career Suicide” and all the others

Score: 10.0

Nadja & Vampillia - The Primitive World

It’s probably not news to you that Nadja are a very prolific band. In ten years they have released twenty-nine full-length albums, eight EPs, and nine splits. A large amount of their output has been very high quality, but like most bands that create such quantities of music, once they get into the swing of making and living off of music it’s difficult for them to stop doing it, even if they have no fresh ideas. For a few years there it seemed like Nadja were making too many unnecessary collaborations with artists whose music was not necessarily a good pairing, making uninspired ambient or post-rock wanderings that had only small servings of character. A lot of people ceased to pay attention to them, but I’m pleased to say it’s time to start listening to Nadja again. This newest release, The Primitive World, sees the Canadian duo pair-up with eleven-piece Japanese “brutal orchestra”, Vampillia, a strange and indulgent new underground act that seems to be causing an awful lot of head-scratching around the place right now. Check out their extremely bizarre and hilarious film clip for the song “Heyoah” and see what I mean (don’t let the Sigh flashbacks irk you, this is nothing like it!).

The entire album centers around a massive track called “Icelight”, and this song is going to ruin your day in the best kind of way. It is a twenty-three minute beast of a drone metal track – slow, atmospheric, dark and long. It is filled with classic Nadja static, that kind of soft static you could drown in, and also: It’s totally metal, sporting pained roars and elephant heaviness. The other four tracks build up and release on either side of this monster; the first and last tracks are piano filler, “Northern Lights” is a triumphant prelude to darkness (think Jesu), and “Anesthetic Depth” is an ambient cool-down after the drone. Throughout all of this, Vampillia provide tastefully placed piano, strings and probably other things that do not intrude on the power of the drone, yet manage to sprinkle some melody on top of the sound torrent.

The Primitive World is a return to metal and form for Nadja, and a good thing for an as-of-yet-not-completely-accepted group like Vampillia, especially one who are trying to promote a very diverse image. If you are not a Nadja fan, this is a very good place to begin (amongst others), and for the fans already out there this regression will be welcomed. Let’s hope both bands realize what they’ve done and take notes for their futures.

In short: Great little drone metal album with powerful riffs and loaded sounds. Finally, another good Nadja work to add to the collection.

Standout tracks: “Icelight” of course

Score: 9.0

Revenge - Scum.Collapse.Eradication

Revenge are not exactly a band bursting at the seams with surprises, all it takes is one look at Revenge’s formulaic album art and even album titles to know that. And actually that’s one of the things that make Revenge cool. They shirk progress, and they don’t bullshit you about it. Why bother progressing, after all, when you are one of the filthiest, most primal war metal bands on the face of the planet? And yet somehow I sense a slight maturity has formed in the band when I compare this with their other records. Are those riffs juxtaposed in a slightly more effective way? Do the trudging “war march” breakdowns crush you more than on the other albums? Of course, it’s impossible to tell through all the cacophony, but I suspect this is the case.

For those of you who don’t know, Canada’s Revenge play a barbaric concoction of black and death metal, and can be lumped into the war metal crowd with the likes of Conqueror and Bestial Warlust for their sheer relentless savagery. Many think Revenge are exemplary of this style, and I’d probably count myself one of them. Revenge seem to be just a bit nastier, a bit more feral, a bit more high on war. And if you are new to the band, this is a very good place to start. In fact I would say this is the best Revenge album, the one that can hold a person’s attention longer than the others. It doesn’t fully disintegrate into a chaotic mess of instruments apparently playing in a completely uncoordinated fashion - one of their main problems in earlier releases – and yet it still keeps their sense of ugly, demonic havoc trve to the core. Although I made a joke about the unintelligible cacophony before, I believe what Revenge have done to achieve this improvement is add a few more breakdowns to anchor the listener between the relentless, pummeling savagery witnessed elsewhere in the songs, thus creating a more coherent structure and general listening experience. They’ve also cleared up the muddiness of the production enough to actually make out the riffs, and now that we can hear them, we know: They kick a lot of fucking arse.

In short: Revenge, of all bands, managed to surprise me and release their best work at a point in their progression when things could have gotten monotonous. Every instrument sounds great, every track rocks. Experience the fury of Revenge without getting bored by the third song!

Standout tracks:  "Pride Ruination (Division Collapse)", "Banner Degradation (Exile or Death)"

Score: 9.0

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