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NANDA DEVI (NEW TRACK UP)

Last Updated: 12/15/2009

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Status: Single
City: Portland
State: Oregon
Country: US
Signup Date: 11/18/2007

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Saturday, March 28, 2009

MetalReview.com on Fifth Season

Their bio claims that they’re “making slow and boring even more slow and boring.” Thankfully, Nanda Devi are a bunch of rotten liars and Fifth Season
is neither particularly slow, nor is it boring. Now if I was to lazily
state that these guys are simply another in a long line of acts taking
their cue from the likes of Isis, Cult of Luna etc. or
dare utter the ‘p’ word, at best you’ll probably roll your eyes in
complete indifference or at worst, want to throw a shoe in my general
direction. So instead I’m going to point how this band is different
from your typical Neur-Isis clone and why you should bother with Fifth Season.
The most obvious thing to point out is the vocals. The combined efforts
of bassist Ryan Whyte and guitarist Aaron Schomaker are easily the
nastiest, most harrowing and evil-sounding vocals I’ve heard from a
band of this type. Aaron Turner may have sounded quite gruff on those
early Isis records but he’s got nothing on the growls, shrieks and howls that Nanda Devi offer up. It really is their standout element and gives the band a darker, more visceral edge than their contemporaries.

The other aspect of Fifth Season
that impresses me is how tight it is. Out of the eight tracks, three
are brief, untitled segues. Whereas on other albums such passages are
often absolutely useless, here they have a genuine ‘what comes next?’
feel and actually serve their purpose of linking the main songs
together. As a result, weightier numbers like “Abandoned By the Sun”
and the excellent “Blood and Iron” are more easily digestible and hence
enjoyable. As much as I love my plodding, atmospheric metal, it’s a sad
fact that I rarely have the time or energy to invest in a
seventy-minute concept album, so to have Nanda Devi do their
business with me in less than forty is a real plus. Also, the fact that
these guys don’t have the same level of innovation or full-on artistry
as their peers is another reason why the modest, streamlined approach
of Fifth Season serves them well.

Ironically, Nanda Devi
are one of the bands I'd most readily suggest to those who normally
find this particular strain of modern metal too 'slow and boring'. Fifth Season
is by and large a dark, heavy and gutsy affair with some suitably
haunting atmospherics thrown into the deal. It cleverly avoids some of
the pitfalls that can dampen albums of this kind, thereby affording
itself some real cross-genre appeal. There, and I didn’t mention
‘post-metal’ once.

-Metalreview.com

http://www.metalreview.com/Reviews/4943/Nanda-Devi-The-Fifth-Season.aspx

Buy Fifth Season at http://cavityrecords.bigcartel.com

5:46 PM

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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Crucial Blast reviews Fifth Season

At first glance the
Portland, Oregon band Nanda Devi looks to be another worshipper at the
altar of Neurosis, plying a brand of crusty, dark sludge-metal with
nebulous mystical overtones and an appetite for slow, crushing riffage.
This debut album has some interesting quirks up it's sleeve, though,
and Fifth Season ends up one of the more interesting debuts
that I've picked up so far this year. The music is mostly slow and
punishing when it's at it's heaviest, and the band's mix of grim
hardcore and doom metal references Buzzoven as much as it does early
Neurosis. Guitars are massively distorted and saturated, grinding out
hulking detuned drone-riffs and gluey slow-motion crustcore, the sludgy
metallic riffing corroded and rich in texture, and these heavier
passages are made even more crushing by being contrasted with fantastic
melodic riffs and leads that give Nanda Devi's music an epic, panoramic
feel. It's similiar in some ways to the moving melodic doom metal of
Thou and Samothrace, but with lots of spidery, angular guitar parts
appearing between the sludgy riffs, alternating the grinding downtuned
crush with tendrils of Slint-like math rock.

The drumming also stands out on this disc. Beginning with "The Circumpolar Current", Fifth Season
combines more straightforward dirges with thunderous walls of awesome,
churning tribal drumming, and the constant surge of polyrhythmic battle
drums across these songs turns Nanda Devi's epic math-sludge into
something even more ferocious and epic. The vocals are utterly brutal,
spewing chunks of vicious death metal roar and gutteral screams, and
the band incorporates some eerie spoken-word samples in a couple of
spots that add to the tension. What appears to be one of Nanda Devi's
siganture moves is the use of short instrumental pieces that surround
their songs, each one untitled, and these range from hypnotic
trance-loops of guitar/bass noise and ambient whirr, to dreamy washes
of buzzing guitar drone and decayed Basinkski-esque loops of fragmented
melody, and floating clusters of melodic minor key guitars that drift
over clanking, grinding machine rhythms. These instrumental interludes
give the album an almost industrial feel, and along with the tribal
drumming, epic melodies, and math rock parts really make these guys
stand out from the sludge/doom metal masses. I hear bits of everything
from Buzzoven and Buried At Sea to Mono, Godflesh and Japanese hardcore
architects Envy in here, but Nanda Devi takes all of these elements,
the soaring melodic guitars, the filthy apocalyptic heaviness, the
dreamy machine loops and the math rock riffs, and weave it into their
own complex, weighty sound.

-Crucial Blast

Pick it up here: http://www.crucialblastshop.net/ or at http://cavityrecords.bigcartel.com

5:29 PM

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