If Nothing Is
If Nothing Is
From their Bandcamp page, "Warning! Listening to IF NOTHING IS demands your full and undivided attention! This is not elevator music. Trying to perform menial tasks while listening to this album will turn your brain into scrambled eggs. Melding sharp technical skills, creative and splendid songwriting, a keen eye for detail and a streak of madness, the debut album is a whirlwind of everything within extreme and technical metal music, from thrash, speed, death to black metal. Intersected with progressive, experimental passages and rich jazzy parts." The album contains ten tracks.
"101" leads us off. It's a short into to the album, featuring dissonant guitar tones and harsh vocals, segueing into "Sovereign." This is an "everything but the kitchen sink" type of sound, where transitions crop up out of nowhere. Melodious passages spring up amidst the dark chaos. But at its core, it is deeply harrowing and dissonant. "Juvenihil" opens with clean guitar melodies and children playing in the background. In the background are vocal moans that you can't quite tell if they are evil or not, and the sound walks the thin line before eventually going off the edge. Those jazzy elements play a supportive role as well.
"Anti-Horde" begins with slow moving elements, grinding you down to your core. Keyboards play in the background with an almost circus type of feeling to them. How can a song make you feel scared and happy at the same time...I don't' know whether or not I am coming or going, so I will just keep on listening. "Dominant Outlaw Nation" opens with more of those soothing clean guitars, washing over you like friendly memories of the past. It soon morphs into Progressive leanings and turn-on-a-dime instrumental work that would make any Formula-One driver bow to you. "Postapo Calypso" begins with a dark swing of Jazz combined with Death Metal...did I just say that? In the background exist both delicate melodies and tortured vocals from a severely twisted mind...the children's clown who is actually a serial murderer but never acts on his impulses. He just smiles skittishly and swallows hard.
"Darkspace Navigator" is a ten-minute opus, beginning with the twang of acoustic guitars and distorted spoken words. All kinds of different atmospheres are presented here, resulting in mass confusion. The shifts here are as nimble as they come, and the background melodies are actually soothing. "Intermezzanine" is a short, four-minute track consisting of charming yet solemn guitar melodies. The second half of the song is darker and thicker, pushing interesting bass note progressions from a really thoughtful artist here in Lars. His bass work is the unsung hero of the album. "Apsylum Absolute" begins with heavy tones and seeming chaos, but there is a method to the band's madness...it's buried deep in the details for those music aficionados who can understand odd chord progressions.
The title track closes the album, as the band saves the best and most complicated piece for last. This smorgasbord of a plethora of different sounds might actually drive you mad, the closer you get it to its pulsating, dynamic core. The heart deep inside the outer cage is bright red and vulnerable, yet nearly impossible to reach. Each second your hand extends towards it is like an hour, and its invisible magnetic core begins to change your DNA from the inside out. Towards the end, it lightens a bit, with jovial melodies that are as pleasing as they are dark. Is this the end, or just the beginning? When you get back your sense of which way is what, let me know.
Every now and again, a band will enter your life and say, "you REALLY need to hear this." Cue IF NOTHING IS, in their freshly pressed, brightly colored and sharp dressed suits with rips and rotting flesh underneath. This album is unlike anything else you have heard this year, that is for sure. The musicianship of the band is incredible, as is their sense of putting together seemingly disconnected parts into a cohesive whole. If 2021 was an album, this would be it in a nutshell...the combination of so many various styles of music into something that actually makes sense. Wondrous, cathartic, and transformative, this album might leave you speechless.
10 / 10
Masterpiece
Songwriting
Musicianship
Memorability
Production
"If Nothing Is" Track-listing:
1. 101
2. Sovereign
3. Juvenihil
4. Anti Horde
5. Dominant Outlaw Nation
6. Postapo Calypso
7. Darkspace Navigator
8. Intermezzanine
9. Apsylum Absolute
10. If Nothing Is
If Nothing Is Lineup:
Boeddelen - Vocals
Håkon Grytvik - Guitars
Mats Stenberg - Guitars
Lars Emil Måløy - Bass
Vegard Myrdal Berg - Drums
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