Nails-Unsilent Death

Southern Lord

Someone’s been keeping a secret.

Deep from the depths of the internationally revered Godcity Studio, where Kurt Ballou of Converge fame, responsible for producing and engineering such prime works as the much lamented Beecher, has been helping craft a work of dripping spite. It’s not yet known how you hold the album, let alone endure the band’s renowned violent live performances.

Glancing at the credentials of this band, you’d expect it to follow the vein of the ‘verge or associated works and it does this, but it's a work that has one foot planted firmly in the past and one in an unknown future. Where most hardcore bands tend to take from and forget their roots, Nails have thrown up a memoriam to the past and shown that not everything about it should be forgotten. Enforced messages without browbeating ferocity. Staccato riffs without that atypical Hatebreed sound. Rhythm that holds you for a second, then kicks your face through. It’s not oft that a band can contain so many pointers to well trodden ground and produce something so fresh.

Unsilent Death as an album is an absolute fist. For a moment close your eyes, listen well and it eviscerates Nasum at their most inspiring. Stay safe at home and listen to Unsilent Death in safety…or get out and find Nails play live and enjoy catharsis in its purest, unadulterated form.

9/10
You’ll like this if Ed Gein are your chums and Hatebreed are too chummy.

Sam Rhodes