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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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

Year of No Light & Altar of Plagues Split

Here we are given a ten-minute song from France’s Year of No Light, a post-sludge/doom/whatever sextet, and a sixteen-minute song from Ireland’s Altar of Plagues, a band who has been getting a lot of acclaim recently for their post-sludge black metal fusion, so we know before listening that this is going to be far from traditional. From the back catalogues of these bands, I expected Year of No Light to be enjoyable yet unremarkable, and Altar of Plagues to bear the stamp of excellence. I turned out to be almost correct.

Year of No Light’s Møn is an instrumental piece of emotional sludge, strong melodies layered in rich sounds. A slow yet decisive track that builds up some fire toward the end, this song is like all of YoNL’s work in that Isis, Neurosis and Jesu can all be heard in it. However, the melody is simply rockin’ – slow, serious, but still grooving. Very cool, and rich effects too. I would have to say that this is one their best tunes, and that the band has been steadily improving their style over the years. Dropping the vocals permanently I think was a good idea, as their music is much less progressive than that of Isis or Neurosis, and the lack of vocals makes it’s trudging pace quite relaxing. If this band continues to work at their style they could make some great music.

Altar of Plagues are a great new rock band by any measure. Excellent song-writing and atmospheric black metal epics imbued with a sludgy heaviness are their trademark. Light Through a Tomb takes a slightly different formula, offering up a strong narrative structure. The song starts with a 7 minute blissful post-rock swelling, before distortion hits, and another four minutes of ominous chords before raging black metal splits the song open. This contrast is obviously a symbol of destruction and descent. A mere two minutes of chaos ensue before it boils abruptly down to a cold drone that peters out into nothing. This song structure places emphasis on close-listening in order to truly appreciate the different and relative parts, and it makes the actual BM all the more powerful and frightening for having only a short glimpse of it, as if it were some night-time horror that always left the majority of its form hidden.

In short: Two wins from the post-metal scene from me with this release.

Standout tracks: Both

Score: 8.5