The press release says it all, really, stating that ‘Nails is beyond brutality,’ describing their sound as . ‘filthy, vicious and raw’ and referring to the band as ‘grindcore tyrants of the American underground.’ Their second ‘full-length’ album, ‘Abandon All Life’ proves without doubt that this isn’t mere PR hyperbole: these guys take absolutely no prisoners.
‘Absolute Control’ has a running time of 43 seconds, and it’s followed by ‘Tyrant’ which lasts 42. The lumbering rupture of agonised noise that is ‘Wide Open Wound’ is a veritable prog rock epic in comparison, clocking in almost three and a half minutes. So, yeah, ‘Abandon All Life’ is a short sharp shock in the most literal sense. The brevity, if anything, only amplifies the intensity of the songs, explosive blasts of guitar-driven rage.
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The 24-second ‘Cry Wolf’ is like being hit in the face with a sledgehammer – and no, it’s not a cover of the A-ha track, which most certainly didn’t end with the words ‘fucking shit’ pretty much the only intelligible phrase on the entire album). The title track is a raving, foaming-at-the-mouth surge of screaming fury, with drumming so hard and fast the pedals threaten to give out, the distorted scream the distillation of fury.
There’s no way to pretend that this is anything other than a nasty, grimy, abrasive rage-filled noise. The result: total fucking annihilation.
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